The Space-Kite
by Anistuffs
Summary: The Federation-Mantis War rages on. A rookie fresh out of the academy is recruited aboard The Space-Kite, a Kestrel class spacecraft belonging to the clandestine Ranger Division. How will he fare in his enlistment into one of the most hazardous professions of the Federation Military? Now has an Official Soundtrack: anubhabsett[dot]bandcamp[dot]com/album/the-space-kite-ost
1. Chapter 1 - Greenie

Chapter 1 – Greenie

* * *

The Space-Kite, craft no. 11 of Carnohi Squadron, Federation Military Ranger Division, was docked at the spacetown Signovia, in the outskirts of mantis controlled space. Signovia housed the only Federation military base in over a thousand parsecs. The crew of the Space-Kite had just finished loading her up with the necessary supplies and were having a rest in the cargo hold while going over their cargo itinerary when Captain Bear Lagardy, a man of thin but well-built stature in his early forties, walked up the ramp.

"Alright crew", spoke the captain, "I have some bad news, some good news and some better news."

"Well that'll be a nice change of pace", said the only other human crew of the Space-Kite, a strongly built woman in her late twenties.

"Quite. The bad news is that my application to get a crew teleporter installed was rejected thanks to our recent couple of losses. Sorry Sofia."

"Darn it." Sofia punched the crate she was sitting on. "Why doesn't the top brass get it? We need to bring the fight to the mantis. That's the only way we can take them by surprise and win more often than runn..."

"Will you let me finish?" said Captain Lagardy in his characteristic stern commanding voice.

Sofia went quiet immediately.

"As I was saying. The good news is that I managed to cajole the supply issuance guy. If we can find a crew teleporter via unofficial means and install it in the Space-Kite, he'll keep it out of the reports and save us on the paperwork."

"Meaning we have to look for it in black markets?" queried the large imposing rock crew member with his normal booming voice.

"Exactly. It's not ideal but we can pull it off. And the last bit of news, the better one, is that I've found our new gunner." Lagardy turned and looked at someone down the ramp of the cargo bay, "and looks like he's here."

Walking up the cargo ramp was a slightly flabby human in his early twenties, carrying a rucksack and a sidebag.

"You got here just in time." Lagardy turned back to the crew and said, "Crew, meet Raffick Woolza… I'm sorry, what was your name again?"

"Lower Private Rafiq Ul Zardari, captain", spoke the man with a salute, quickly standing in attention.

"Right. Sorry about that. And ease up soldier. We're not on the battlefront yet. Besides, this is a war of skirmishes. Our ship will be alone in deep mantis space with no backup. Ranks and salutes don't work there; that's only for when we're at a base. Out there, the 5 of us is all we got. So we have to take care of each other. Got it Raff?"

"Yes sir", said Rafiq as he put his hand down and walked up the ramp.

"A greenie, Captain? Seriously?" said Sofia, incredulous.

Lagardy took a glance at Rafiq standing at the top of the ramp, turned to Sofia and said, "He's got very good aims on simulation and he comes very well recommended."

"Captain, a greenie with good aim is still a greenie. The Space-Kite is a ranger ship. We need someone with experience on her guns."

"I agree but with our recent win/lose ratio, I assure you he's the best I could get without having to bribe some general."

Lagardy turned to face Rafiq listening to the conversation. "So Rafiq, I'm sure you realize with you being fresh outta the academy, this assignment is purely on a trial basis. If your performance isn't up to the stuff your report says, you'll be back on the recruitment list. We clear?"

"Yes sir. I'll try my best" Rafiq replied.

"Good to hear that. Anyways, this is the crew of the Space-Kite. I'm the captain, Bear Lagardy. Over there we have Pomeroy, our engines operator." Lagardy said, nodding towards the metallic grey coloured humanoid, composed of trillions of nanomachines, standing a little to the side holding a datapad.

Pomeroy, the engi, gave a slight nod of its single giant green sensory module and said, "Greetings."

Rafiq nodded back. "Hi."

"Next we have our shields guy, Zekko Sunn." Lagardy gestured towards the rock, a hulking humanoid shape made entirely of organic stone wearing a XXXXL sized T shirt and oversized shorts, sitting on the floor.

"Welcome aboard" said Zekko, stretching out his large hand.

Rafiq stretched out his arm and held the rock's hand and said "Hello". Zekko gently wrapped his large stony fist over Rafiq's hand and shook it softly.

Sofia said, quite surprised, "Didn't expect a greenie to have met a rock before."

"I haven't", replied Rafiq.

"Then how come you were so nonchalant to shake Zekko's hand? Even I was hesitant the first time I met a rock", inquired Lagardy, equally surprised as Sofia.

Rafiq said with a smile, "He's not going to crush my hands. So why should I worry?"

Zekko prodded, "What if I didn't know my own strength? How were you so sure I wouldn't hurt you by accident?"

"Then you wouldn't have stretched out your hand to shake mine in the first place."

Zekko gave a short laugh at this and said, "I like this guy already captain. He's got spunk."

Lagardy smiled, "and over here we have our only other human crew, Sofia Grundi. She's been working on weapons since our designated gunner was KIA about 2 decadivs ago."

Rafiq was shaken by this. He certainly didn't expect to be deployed in a ranger craft straight out of the academy. But he was elated to hear that he was since very few greenies get directly selected on one. And even though he knew that 70% of gunners on a ranger craft in this war have an average lifespan of about 1 to 1.5 styears at most, hearing Captain Lagardy reminded him of what exactly he was getting into.

Although he was trying to hide it, Rafiq's face spelt out clearly what he was thinking. Lagardy knew he had to stop the newbie's train of thought before he scares himself witless before they even leave the dock.

"Hey Raff?", the captain said.

"Sir?" Rafiq was snapped out of his thoughts.

"Stop that line of thought. You're a soldier for Pete's sake. This is what you've been trained to do. So buck up. Sofia will show you where the crew quarters are and give you a tour of the Space-Kite."

Sofia gave a short sigh and hopped down from the crate.

"After the tour, Sofia's gonna show you the weapons. Get used to the actual controls while we're still docked. This isn't a simulation any more Rafiq. And one last thing; on my ship, I demand absolute teamwork. Treat each other like family because all of our lives are dependent on each other. You can forget rank on my ship but don't forget that. We clear?"

"Aye aye, captain", said Rafiq.

"C'mon greenie. Let's go", called Sofia from near the door heading towards the inside of the craft.

Rafiq quickly followed her out of the cargo hold.

* * *

The two of them walked through the narrow corridor of the ship. They soon passed a door off to the left with the word pantry written on it.

Sofia pointed at it while still maintaining her pace, "That there's our pantry. We have meals either in the crew quarters or we just grab some food and eat it in our respective rooms. How good are you at repairing?"

Rafiq was slightly confused at this sudden change in topic. "Uhm you mean like repairing broken machinery?"

"Yeah. Damaged systems or subsystems. Also, breaches."

"Half-decent, I guess. We've had classes on standard ship repair."

"Did the classes include repairing while being attacked?"

"Uhh no."

"Thought so. Well I'll help you out on the first few times. But you better learn fast. Anyways, here we are to the cabins."

They both reached a set of double doors leading into a medium sized room, housing 4 beds side by side and a large mattress near the back wall beside some cupboards.

"That mattress is for Zekko, obviously. Poms doesn't actually need to lie down but he does anyways." Sofia pointed towards one of the cupboards. "That one's empty. You can drop off your bags inside there. Forget the lockers at the academy. No private storage here. Get used to it."

"Right", replied Rafiq as he took off his rucksack and handbag and shoved them in the cupboard.

"The bathroom's over there", Sofia spoke, pointing towards a door a little ways ahead. "Remember, use the NACS for cleaning. Don't use water unless absolutely necessary. You need to change?"

"Uh, no, I'm fine."

"Okay. Just remember, this is a ranger ship. We specialize in strategic clandestine operations. That means absolutely no official uniforms unless we're docked at a Feder base. Anyway, let's continue with the tour."

* * *

The tour of the Space-Kite took about 20 minutes. Sofia tried her best to explain everything to Rafiq, who listened intently and asked questions every so often trying to take in as much information as he could. The two of them were now at the weapons control room with Sofia showing Rafiq how everything worked with the weapon charging and targeting system.

"…and that's about everything you need to know. I think. Any questions?"

Rafiq could tell that Sofia was getting fatigued. It was clear that she's not used to talking this much. He got a feeling that she's more of an 'actions-speak-louder' kind of girl.

"Yeah, you forgot to tell me the class of the weapons system. Also, I could see outside that we have a Burst Laser Mk 2, Hull Laser Mk 1 and an Artemis. Is there anything else?" Rafiq queried.

"No. That's all. We got a class 5 on the wepsys. So we can power all of them simultaneously. By the way, I'll be keeping a close watch on you for our first few combat encounters to see how you're doing and take over if you're screwing up royally."

Rafiq turned back just in time to see Sofia smirk as she sat down on the extra stool. He responded, "Thanks. I'll try my best not to let you have that chance. What happened to the previous weapons crew before you, if you don't mind me asking?"

Sofia said, "Are you sure you wanna hear it? It's kinda terrifying for a greenie and I don't want you to have nightmares before even getting to a battlefield."

Rafiq replied, "I had a feeling you were going to say something like that. No, I'm not sure. I might get nightmares, yes, but I think I should know. So I can try my best to avoid meeting the same fate."

Sofia looked at Rafiq. It was clear as day to her that the greenie was trying to show his best game face but was scared inside. She found herself somewhat impressed. Zekko was right, the newbie was plucky. She gave a sigh. "Okay. I did warn you."

"We were facing this large mantis craft. They had fried our weapon systems. But our last Artemis shot managed to take down theirs so they weren't going to damage us either. It was a stalemate. And then we got boarded. 2 mantises, Zek and I can handle. But this time there were 4, at once. Zekko and I managed to trap 3 of them in our medbay, holding them off from running to other parts of the ship. But a lone mantis managed to break through the door to the weapons bay."

"Sean was busy repairing. I guess since the rooms outside were vented to space, he expected the mantis to die before breaking through. By the time we were done with 2 mantises and finishing off the 3rd, we heard his scream from the weapons room. I quickly ran over, leaving Zekko to take care of the 3rd one. When I reached this room, I saw the mantis remove her claw from a gaping hole in Sean's back. Poms also entered the room from the door on the other side. Then the mantis turned to me and laughed. The bitch laughed." Sofia punched her knee in anger.

"I lifted my pistol and so did Poms but the bugface disappeared, teleporting out. Neither of us could get a shot in. I grabbed Sean and felt no pulse. I told Pomeroy to repair the weapons and carried Sean to the medbay. Zekko was on his way out when I ran in the medbay and laid Sean on the table and started the adrenal pump and the auto-defib. Didn't work. He was already dead. The mantis stabbed right through his heart. He probably died before I even reached the room."

Rafiq was speechless. Sofia was right. That was a horrible way to go. He asked in a raspy voice, "Did you get them?"

"You bet we did. The craft was trying to jump away but Sean had managed to repair the weapons to level 1 before going down and Poms fired an Artemis as soon as it charged up and blasted the mantis' cockpit. Bear told me to leave Sean and help Poms with repairs. I did. We quickly patched up the controls and used a burst laser volley to take down their shields, followed by the hull laser to crack the craft's hull wide open."

Rafiq listened intently and was about to speak when the captain's voice came over the intercom, "Listen up crew, we just got our assignment. We're heading to the Sedocho sector. Everyone, prep your respective systems. We leave in 10 minutes."

Sofia stood up from the stool, "That was fast. Well, enough flashbacking. I'll go doublecheck the life support."

"I can go check the doors and sensors." Rafiq volunteered.

Before Sofia could say anything, Pomeroy entered the room and responded, "Not required. Doors control and Sensor status, 100 percent. All external doors' status, closed."

Sofia chuckled, "Well, no arguing with an engi on that. You just sit tight and run a diagnostic on the wepsys. I'll be right back."

Rafiq ran a short diagnostic on the weapons, powering them up and depowering them. Sofia got back soon and took her seat on the stool. Soon enough, the captain's voice came over the intercoms, "Alright crew, we're undocking. This is it Private Zardari. Welcome to the frontlines of the Federation-Mantis War."

The ship shook slightly as it undocked from Signovia. The impulse thrusters carried them to the FTL beacon near the station. A short while later came the 'ding' sound that Rafiq would soon grow accustomed to, indicating the FTL drive becoming fully charged.

Lagardy's voice came over the intercom again, "Prepare for FTL jump in 4. 3. 2. 1. Here we go."

The Space-Kite disappeared in a bright flash near the FTL beacon.

* * *

Footnotes:

Div: Standardized unit of time used in space, corresponding to a day.

Decadiv: 10 divs.

Styear: Short for Standard Year. Standard measuring unit of time in space. 400 divs = 1 styear.

NACS: Non-Aqueous Cleaning System

Burst Laser Mk 2: Common but highly efficient laser projectile weapon that fires 3 laser pulse packets. Standard in Federation military crafts.

Hull (Smasher) Laser Mk 1: Laser projectile weapon firing 2 packets of laser pulse, carrying more kinetic energy than the Burst Laser. This allows the shots to cause breaches on weak sections of an enemy spacecraft's hull.

Artemis: Standard missile launcher on most Federation ships. Missile weapons, although slow, ignores the ionic shielding defensive system on almost every ship that protects against laser and beam weaponry.

Wepsys: Short for 'weapons system'.


	2. Chapter 2 - First fight

Chapter 2 – First fight

* * *

"They got a Pegasus missile", Rafiq yelled into the intercom while reattaching the wires that came loose from a previous laser volley on the weapons system.

Sofia leaned over and looked at the image on the vidscreen which displayed the small red-coloured claw-shaped mantis scouting craft the Space-Kite was chasing. "Are you sure? Looks kinda like an Artemis launcher to me."

Before Rafiq could respond said missile launcher on the mantis scout fired off 2 missile warheads, one after another, straight towards them.

Lagardy yelled "Pomeroy, port side thrusters" and veered to the right.

One of the missiles missed its mark but the next hit home on the engines. Immediately the mantis scout fired off another volley of dual lasers and heavy laser. With the engine weakened, all 3 hit their mark. The 2 laser packets if the dual laser disrupted the Space-Kite's level 2 ionic shielding momentarily and the heavy laser got through and hit squarely on the engines.

From her squatting posture, Sofia lost her balance in the ensuing shockwave and tumbled over. Rafiq managed to keep his balance by holding on to the weapons control table but the vibration caused his laser pistol to fly out of his holster and land in a corner of the room.

"Poms? Are you okay?" Sofia shouted in her intercom while quickly standing up.

"Affirmative. Engine status, critical and on fire. Assistance appreciated", came the reply from Pomeroy in its normal voice which lacked any hint of alarm. Engis, being techno-organic lifeforms, feel emotions very differently from bio-organic lifeforms.

"You got it. Fick, weapon's up to you. I gotta go help Poms." Sofia said running towards the door.

"Got it", replied Rafiq as he finished tightening the wires of the charging conduit to the burst laser and it started to power up again. He stood up and sat in his chair.

Captain Lagardy's voice came over the intercoms, "Rafiq, fire the Artemis. We're sitting ducks with our engines offline."

"I haven't got the vector calculations yet captain. There's a high chance of missing", Rafiq responded.

"Did you listen to what I said? We can't dodge. If they fire that Pegasus again…"

"Sir, we already accidentally wasted 2 k-ammo with the autofire getting jammed. If I miss this one…"

"Their shields are back online; the laser won't cut it. Fire the missile alrea…oh shit!"

The Pegasus missile fired its dual warheads again. Rafiq surmised that the mantis craft had an automated weapons re-loader to be able to fire again this fast. He swore under his breath.

The 2 warheads were headed straight towards the weapons system of the Space-Kite. Rafiq muttered angrily, "Of course. Target the weapons when the ship's disabled." But that also meant that the missiles were headed TOWARDS the weapons.

"Rafiq, get out of the weapons bay", came Bear's frantic voice over the coms.

Rafiq didn't reply. He kept staring intently at the screen and making mental trajectory calculations. This was going to be a manual shot.

"Rafi…"

Pew pew pew, fired the Burst Laser Mk 2 the moment the first warhead pierced through the forward portion of the ship's shield. The first 2 shots hit the 2 incoming missiles dead on, exploding them both. The missile debris pelted the hull of the Space-Kite, sending shockwaves throughout the entire craft. Lagardy was stunned. So was probably the mantis captain because the 3rd laser shot went and harmlessly landed on their shields with no evasive maneuvers on their part.

"Holy Ardun", exclaimed Zekko as he saw in the vidscreen what just happened.

With the targeting system's vector calculations ready, Rafiq immediately fired the Artemis. It flew straight and slammed on the hull of the enemy's shield generator room, damaging the shield generators once again and dropping the shield's level back down to one.

Over in the engines room Sofia and Pomeroy had managed to put out the fire just in time to see the 2 missiles exploding out the windows. Sofia gasped. Pomeroy just said in its usual calm voice, "Probability of interception of both warheads, 0.012%. Event category, extremely rare", before starting to repair the engines.

"…Holy crap Rafiq! Did you freaking plan that?", Lagardy finally asked.

"One second captain", said Rafiq as he shot the hull laser. Two packets of high energy particles, having a greenish glow because of the particular frequency of photons emitted by them, flew towards the mantis scout. The first packet hit the enemy craft's shield, disrupting it and letting the other one go through, hitting the weapons bay. The Pegasus missile launcher was immediately depowered.

"You were saying captain?"

"Damn son, that was insane!" replied the captain, still astonished. "For all my 11 odd years of field duty, I've never even heard of anyone taking down 2 Pegasus missiles with a laser volley. 1 missile? Yes. Two? Never."

Rafiq smiled at the coms and as the burst laser charged back to full, fired it again. Glowing red instead of green like the hull laser due to having a different frequency of excitation, the first packet of high energy particles hit the single remaining shield of the mantis scout and temporarily disrupted it. The scout frantically fired its thrusters and managed to dodge the second packet, but the last one slammed squarely on their cockpit, sending shockwaves through the scout's weakened hull and overheating the piloting system until it was completely disabled.

A disabled piloting has the same intended effect as disabled engines. Like the Space-Kite had been a few moments ago, the mantis craft was now unable to direct its engines and maneuver. It was now at the mercy of inertia making the craft float at the velocity it had just before the piloting system was taken down. This also had the obvious side-effect of making vector calculations for weapon firing for any opponent laughably easy. Thus, the scout was now completely unable to dodge any attacks until the piloting system was repaired.

The scout fired their laser volley once again. But with the engine somewhat repaired Lagardy fired the rear thrusters and propelled the craft slightly forwards, missing one of the dual laser packets. The other packet and the heavy laser both hit and disrupted the level 2 shield temporarily. But with no other weapon to strike through this opening in the Space-Kite's ionic shielding, the scout's attack was rendered ineffectual. Zekko sent a 'refresh' signal to the shield generator, bringing both layers of shields back online very quickly.

The mantis scout redirected the reactor power from the heavy laser to the Pegasus and the missile started charging up again. But the two laser weapons on the Space-Kite charged up first and Rafiq fired them both in an alpha strike, a common and effective weapon firing strategy in which multiple weapons, usually laser weapons, are fired simultaneously for maximum piercing of shields followed by maximum possible damage, usually focusing on a single system.

The mantis, being awful with delicate system repairs, hadn't yet fixed their cockpit, preferring to fix their shields first. They did manage to get their level 2 shields online just before the hull laser, leading the laser volley, reached their ship. But being unable to dodge any attacks due to the damaged piloting control and with 5 packets between the burst and the hull laser, the scout craft was shredded. The 2 hull lasers disrupted the level 2 shields and the 3 burst laser packets struck the weapons cabin, hammering the craft's hull beyond critical.

The hull of the scout shattered and broke apart with debris flying in all directions. Rafiq exhaled in relief and leaned back in his chair, exhausted.

"Impressive firing Rafiq", Zekko said over the coms from the shield room. "You certainly chose him correctly, captain."

Sofia entered the room clapping. "Way to go Fick. That was the best starting battle for a rookie I've ever seen or heard. No doubt about it."

"How do you like him now Sofia?" Lagardy asked with a chuckle over the intercom.

"Not bad." Sofia said while walking to the corner of the room and picking up Rafiq's laser pistol. "Let's see if he can keep this up on the next ones or is this just beginner's luck."

"I'll be honest, guys." Rafiq said, "I knew I could make the first laser packet hit the leading warhead when I saw its trajectory. But that hit on the 2nd missile was pure dumb luck."

Despite the lucky shot, Rafiq was very happy. His first ever battle had gone well beyond his expectations despite taking a laser volley straight on the weapons bay in the beginning of the skirmish.

Sofia walked back to Rafiq and handed him his pistol. "Keep it tightly holstered. Your pistol can't protect you if it flies off at the slightest tremor."

"Right. Sorry." Rafiq took his gun and belted it tightly to the holster on his waist. His aim with personal weapons was subpar but it was one of the golden rules to keep a handgun on you at all times when on the field.

"And I'm sure you don't need me to tell you not to let this victory go to your head. No two battles are ever alike and anything can go wrong at any time. So ALWAYS keep your head straight in a fight or it can easily become your last."

"Yeah I know." Rafiq knew very well exactly how lucky this battle was and what could've happened had that second laser missed. In the worst case, that warhead could've caused a hull breach in the weapons bay and peppered him with shrapnels. The thought sent a chill down his spine.

"We're closing in on the wreckage. Sofia, stop scaring the kid and go help Pomeroy prep the shuttle. Let's see if we can salvage something useful", Lagardy spoke over the intercom.

"That's my cue", Sofia said, heading towards the door.

"Rafiq, good work on the battle but like Sofia said, don't let either victory or loss get to you." Lagardy said as Pomeroy entered the weapons bay, nodded towards Rafiq and followed Sofia out.

* * *

The Space-Kite was now closer to the debris of the scout. Rafiq looked out the window and he saw an escape pod floating unscathed amidst the wreckage. Then he noticed the lifeless body of one of the mantis crew floating near the pod. Rafiq realized that the poor soul just fell short of entering the pod and possibly escaping alive.

Rafiq felt a twinge of pain. He knew what was at stake in this war and why they fought but seeing that mantis' body just floating there, so close to survival, made his stomach turn. More so since he knew he was the one that killed him and that mantis certainly isn't going to be the last one he kills. He was now a soldier, a killer. He always knew from the start, back when he opted for weapons control in the academy, that it would be his hands that would deliver the killing blow to the enemies of whatever craft he would serve in. And now he was here, a murderer, with blood on his hands and more blood to come.

He shivered and shrank down in his seat as the ramifications of his actions set in. He knew he couldn't tell any of his crewmates about this. They were all veterans. This was normal day-to-day life for them – kill or be killed. He had had classes on psychology at the academy but as the teachers always said in those classes, you never know just how it feels to kill someone until you actually do it. There were training regimens and exercises for soldiers to calm their minds in the time of war, to focus on why they're fighting, to justify what would otherwise feel like cold-blooded murder.

Rafiq, realizing that his heart was now racing, slowed his breath. He wiped his forehead clean of sweat as he took long deep breaths and tried to clear his head. He started to hum a tune he heard as a kid to calm his mind. He tried to focus on why he was here, why he was fighting. He reminded himself of the mantis invasion of the human home sector Solcen. He remembered the images he saw on the news as a teenager of the red claw-shaped menacing spacecrafts of the mantis heading towards the Sol system; the massive evacuation from his home town towards the inner-system towns; videos of the intense battle between the Federation and the mantis armies in the Oort clouds in the outer Sol system…

"Rafiq!" Bear's voice broke Rafiq's trance and he quickly sat up alert. "Keep a close eye on the sensors and keep the weapons hot. We don't know if that ship was expecting company and we need to be ready in case they did while we go about salvaging its remains."

Rafiq closed his eyes and pushed all his thoughts back in the recesses of his mind. This was not the time. He reminded himself of what Captain Bear had said back at Signovia – "the 5 of us is all we got. So we have to take care of each other." The lives of his crewmates depended on him as much as his life depended on them.

He sat up straight and replied, "Aye aye, Captain!"

* * *

While keeping an eye on the sensors, Rafiq had started talking with Lagardy and Zekko which helped calm his mind. He was talking about how he had suspected the scout to have an automated re-loader augmentation when Sofia and Pomeroy signalled the Space-Kite that they were returning.

Rafiq kept a close watch on the vidscreen as Sofia and Pomeroy returned from salvaging the remains of the mantis scout, towing the escape pod he saw earlier tied behind the shuttle.

After the shuttle had finished docking, Zekko assisted Sofia in unloading the few k-ammo and drone parts they found amongst the floating debris along with various miscellaneous content like broken door parts, one half of a medbay table, some still-usable sections of the hull, a laser pistol, the twisted frame of the Pegasus launcher – all of which can be traded for supplies at a settlement.

The two of them pushed the escape pod salvaged from the enemy craft in a corner of the cargo bay while Pomeroy carried some broken portions of the hard drive which contained the scout ship's log to Captain Lagardy on the bridge.

Lagardy said, looking at the pieces of the log drive, "Is that all there was left?"

"Affirmative. Status of 97.40% data, irrecoverably corrupted", Pomeroy replied.

"What about the other 2.6?"

"Recovered. Data content, price memo for shop on planet Teg'rysen." Pomeroy said, handing Bear his datapad. "Probability of mantis scout having stopped there for supplies, 98.00%."

Lagardy looked at the memo. The mantises bought an automated weapons re-loader at a shop called Gukiyo's Trade Post located in a town called Jyoven. "Hey, Rafiq. You were right about the auto re-loader." He spoke in the intercom.

"Just as I thought. No way a Pegasus can fire that fast. Even with a well trained crew on weapons, it'd take at least 15 seconds", Rafiq replied.

Sofia asked over the coms from the cargo bay. "So what d'you think Cap Bear? That shop could have a crew teleporter for sale, not to mention Poms can probably hack into the spaceport authority's logs…"

"And find out where the scout was coming from or headed to. Yeah, I'm thinking the same." Lagardy turned towards Pomeroy and asked, "How far is Teg'rysen?"

"Spatial distance, 3.07 parsecs. FTL jumps required, 2", replied Pomeroy.

"It's decided then. Next stop, Teg'rysen."

* * *

Footnote:

Pegasus missile: Creative missile weapon designed by engi scientists that fires two projectiles for the cost of one k-ammo.

Dual laser: Basic 2 shot laser weapon. Small but efficient. Often used by transport ships that can't afford better.

Heavy laser: The single laser packet fired by a heavy laser carries 2.5 times more kinetic energy than the standard burst laser packet, allowing it to wreak more havoc. However, the single packet is completely blocked by a single layer of ionic shielding.

Autofire: Automatic weapon firing program that fires each weapon as soon as it is ready.

Automated weapons re-loader: Spacecraft augmentation equipment that reduces weapon charging duration.

Ardun: One of the many gods of the rocks.

K-ammo: A.k.a. ammo. Short for Kinetic Payload Ammunition. Used by missiles and bomb launchers.


	3. Chapter 3 - Teg'rysen

Chapter 3 – Teg'rysen

* * *

The planet Teg'rysen orbits the class K orange dwarf star Rethios at a distance of about 1.6 eyn. The planet had native life forms in the evolutionary stage of early mammals before being colonised by zoltan settlers almost a hundred styears ago. Despite the sector later coming under the control of mantises, Teg'rysen freely operates as a traders' hub mainly thanks to the planet's indigenous plants, of particular the plant culsiryne, whose fruits make one of the tastiest soups in the cossverse.

The Space-Kite's destination was the moderately large town of Jyoven, located at 18 gon latitude south of the equator in the delta of the river Jyov. Jyoven is one of the oldest settlements on Teg'rysen and houses one of only three spaceports on the planet.

Being a ranger craft, the Space-Kite doesn't sport any sort of Federation markings which helps in their clandestine operations deep in enemy space and to dock on planets or stations in such regions. In fact, this is one of the main reasons why ranger ships are almost exclusively generic civilian crafts like the Kestrel or the Torus.

The crew of the Space-Kite was gathered at the bridge discussing their next move. Lagardy showed that immediately after the Space-Kite docked, a ton of advertisements for the many trading shops in the town was transmitted to them, among which a rather tacky one was for Gukiyo's Trade Post. The shop was situated just outside the medium sized spaceport.

Lagardy was talking. "So Sofia's definitely going to Gukiyo's since she's the customer. Pomeroy and I'll try to check out the spaceport authority's building and see what we can find. This being a small settlement planet, I think we can pull off some flight data with relative ease. What do you say Pomeroy?"

Pomeroy nodded in agreement. "Insufficient data to compute accurate probability. Extrapolation of current data estimates greater than 35% chance of success."

"Good enough for me. Zekko and Rafiq, you two hold the fort and..."

"I think the greenie should come along", said Sofia, cutting off Bear.

"I'm sorry what?" Rafiq asked, completely taken aback.

"What? You need to learn how to go about doing business in a shady place like this, Fick. It'll do you good." Sofia responded.

Rafiq spoke nervously, "But there are mantises. Shouldn't Zekko be a better choice? And besides, why can't we just call them up and do our business online from the ship?"

"Okay, look Fick.", Sofia spoke in an authoritative tone. "You know that ranger crafts don't have any Feder insignia so we can go about our tour of duty while appearing as messengers or mercs, right? Well that ain't all."

Zekko started explaining, "Every ranger craft comes equipped with false mercenary ids which we use extensively to gather information. It's that very thing that allows us to dock on planets like Teg'rysen or stations deep in mantis space."

"In fact, we've actually been hailed by mantis ships a few times and offered merc jobs to go spy on Feder bases. Right before we opened fire and caught them by surprise", Sofia spoke with a chortle.

Lagardy explained further, "And those fake ids are the reason it's better for us to go shopping in person. If we contact them online, we're basically giving them an invite to poke around in our computers if they happen to have any hacking softwares. With this likely being a black market store, that's most likely the case. And regarding the mantises here, you know that our war is only with the 2 mantis clans Plinok and Sevril, not the rest of them. Well, Teg'rysen is under the control of the Kilik clan. They have no beef with the Federation but they'd much rather side with their brethren than us if they find out."

"Okay, but that still doesn't explain why Zekko's not a better choice.", Rafiq protested.

"Two humans, an engi and a rock coming out from a Kestrel in a mantis controlled sector?" Zekko said, "That's too much of a coincidence and we'd be pressing our luck. Mercenaries usually don't employ many varying species."

"But I…" Rafiq started.

Sofia cut him off with a pat on his shoulder and said with a sly grin, "C'mon Fick, what're you afraid of? We're just customers looking for a crew teleporter."

Rafiq realized that he's not going to win this debate. So he resigned with a sigh. "Okay, fine."

"That's the spirit." Sofia patted his back.

"By the way, Pomeroy", Bear asked, "What's the status of our hull? The engine room took quite a beating in the last fight."

Pomeroy replied, "Total hull integrity, 73.33%. Engine room hull status, minor fractures."

"Well that won't do. Right then, Zekko, you stay aboard and refill our water supply. Pomeroy and I'll contact the spaceport repair crew at the SDC and have them sent your way."

"Sir." Zekko gave a short nod.

"We're doing pretty well on fuel for both the FTL and the impulse drives so I don't think we'll need any more for now. Anyway, time's wasting. Let's move it, people."

"Let's go Fick", said Sofia cheerily as she all but pushed the newbie out the cockpit door.

* * *

Rethios was setting over the horizon as the Space-Kite was landing. Now the dusk sky wore a soft greenish-blue hue slowly turning dark.

The 4 of them walked down the ramp. Sofia and Rafiq headed towards the gate straight ahead while Bear and Pomeroy headed right towards the SDC building, walking past 3 trading crafts.

Up ahead, there was a lone mantis guard at the gate staring down at a datapad in his hands. Being a small spaceport catering mostly to traders, many of them disreputable, and the occasional mercenaries and pirates, a security guard is almost just for show. But they do help to break up the uncommon but occasional brawl that takes place between rival mercs or pirates.

Although he had seen them many times on videos, this was the first time Rafiq was seeing a live mantis with his own eyes this close. The green skinned insectoid was roughly the same height as him, maybe a bit taller. The guard was wearing a light purple shirt and maroon coloured 4 legged pants called tuarts. The guard sat on a slightly elongated chair with his 2 back legs in a crossed position up on the chair and his 2 front legs on the ground in front of it.

As they walked by him, the guard took a short glance at them with his two large eyes and two small antennae before turning back to his datapad, watching the evening news.

As soon as they were out of the guard's hearing, Sofia said, "See Fick? Just keep your cool and everything will be fine."

Immediately outside the gate was a large terminus area with a few brown coloured oblong buses plying passengers to and from different parts of the city. Although it was a sparsely populated remote planet, many zoltans and mantises with some humans and engis were milling about the area. The 2 of them took a left turn and walked beyond the bus terminus to rows of shops selling everything from the local indigenous vegetables to little statues of the Great Eye.

They walked past the shops until they reached a 2 storey yellow brick building with the sign Gukiyo's Trade Post hanging in front of it. Walking inside they saw a mantis standing guard at the door, an engi behind a counter to the right doing some calculations of purchases and at the centre were 2 mantises haggling with a zoltan, a humanoid species slightly shorter than an average human with bioluminescent green veins covering their entire body to the point where their whole body appears to be glowing, standing behind the counter.

The zoltan, clothed in business attire, looked past his prime, apparent from the dullness and pale hue of his bioluminescent glow. But he was definitely holding his ground in bartering against the two mantises.

"Look. 80 surgs is my final offer for a shield charge booster. Take it or leave it. But you know very well what happens if you don't have one while asteroid mining. Your call." The old zoltan spoke, ending the two mantises' bargaining attempts.

The 2 mantis looked at each other. Then one of them sighed and said, "Fine. You win Gukiyo, you tressick. Argh…" and started counting out square money-chips from his bag.

"Sticks and stones, folks." Gukiyo spoke with a chuckle as he collected the chips. "You know how it goes in this business."

The 2 mantises scowled as Gukiyo finished counting the chips. As he finished, a mantis came out of a door behind him. Gukiyo turned to her and showed her a datapad and spoke, "Jart, grab these items from storage and take them to the mining ship at spot 4. And make it fast. They leave within the hour."

Jart took out a datapad of her own and copied the list. And then with a small "Roger" stepped back out the back door.

"There you go." Gukiyo addressed the 2 mantises again. "Jart will deliver your items shortly. Have a profitable mining trip, folks. Now if you'll excuse me, it looks like I have new customers."

Gukiyo gestured at Sofia and Rafiq and said in a jolly tone, "Welcome folks. I'm Gukiyo and how may I be of service on this fine evening?"

Sofia walked up to Gukiyo as the 2 mantises walked out the store, still grumbling from their transaction. Sofia leaned over the counter and said, "We're looking for a crew teleporter."

"Well now. That's an interesting item you're after. People don't generally look for one of those unless they're looking for a fight", spoke the zoltan, still in his cheerful tone.

"Let's just say it'll help us in our specific line of work." Sofia replied with a smirk.

"I see." Gukiyo gave a knowing smile. "And any businesser worth their salt wouldn't pry into the affairs of their customers. But I must ask. Where did you get the idea that my shop might have one, hm?"

"We were referred to you actually."

"Oh?"

"We ran into a scouting ship for the Sevril clan a few jumps out. They mentioned they'd just visited your shop and got an auto weapon re-loader. From their talk we got the implication that your shop was very resourceful and so we decided to check it out, just in case."

Rafiq was impressed at how Sofia lied without faltering. He surmised that she must've had that story prepared beforehand, while they were walking down the marketplace.

"Ah yes, I remember the scout party. They were here this morning. Fine folks. They were looking for a teleporter themselves but sadly didn't have the money to afford one. I hope you do." Rafiq was beginning to wonder if Gukiyo practiced maintaining that smug smile.

Sofia smiled. "So we did come to the right place. But I'm sorry to say that we kinda blew it on our last job. Quite literally I'm afraid. Would you be willing to trade in scraps?"

"That depends. What do you have?"

Sofia took out a datapad from her pocket and handed it to Gukiyo and said, "Here's our cargo list. Well, the ones we're willing to trade."

Gukiyo took the datapad and started browsing through the list. A little later he said, "There's an escape pod on this list."

"That's right."

"You're willing to trade in your escape pod for a personnel teleporter?" Gukiyo queried, slightly surprised.

"It's not ours", was Sofia's concise reply.

"I see." Gukiyo looked over the rest of the list before handing the datapad back to Sofia and said, "I've marked the things I'm willing to accept for a crew teleporter."

Sofia looked over the list. "That's quite the haul you're making here."

"I have to stay afloat in this market. I'm sure someone of your profession can understand the effect of the war on the economy." Gukiyo replied smugly while adjusting his suit.

Gukiyo's gesture worried Rafiq. He didn't see what the zoltan marked on Sofia's datapad but he could tell that they were obviously being overcharged. However he couldn't ascertain from Sofia's voice whether she was worried or not.

"Tell you what Gooky." Sofia spoke, showing Gukiyo the datapad, "Here's my counteroffer. You skip the reactor parts and the impulse drive shunts and we have a deal. I think that's fair considering you're getting a whole escape pod. We all know how much those sell for."

Gukiyo took a glance at the new list and asked, still having the smug smile on his face, "And if I refuse?"

Sofia shrugged her shoulders and said, "We can always find someone else offering a crew teleporter but how often do you come across a pristine escape pod?"

Gukiyo's smile vanished. The old trader was now in a bind. He certainly didn't want to settle for a lower price but that unscathed escape pod was definitely a rare find in a backwater planet like Teg'rysen. He could easily make a fortune on that from some passenger craft and this female human knew so. His veins started glowing in frustration.

Rafiq knew Sofia's gotten the upper hand when Gukiyo spoke. "You drive a hard bargain, human. I'm willing to agree to your offer if you include the reactor casing parts and 2 of the impulse shunts. But that's my final offer."

Sofia thought for a second and turned towards Rafiq, "How much ammo do we have?"

"Not too much. Just 6." Rafiq replied with a grimace as he recalled how the autofire got jammed at the start of the battle with the Sevril scout earlier, wasting 2 missiles.

Sofia turned back to Gukiyo, "Okay Gook. You throw in, say, a deci of kinetic ammo and you can have your starting offer."

"TEN ammo? Now that's profiteering, even with all 5 shunts."

"I'm sure someone of your profession can understand the effect of the war on the economy." Sofia winked.

Gukiyo stared at Sofia's face for a few seconds and then his green veins dulled down to their normal level as he started laughing jovially. "Well played human. It's a deal. Hey Beroos, get in here."

An engi rushed in through the door in the back. Gukiyo told him, "Grab a crew teleporter and ten k-ammo and take them to the craft at spot... what was it?"

"7," Sofia replied. "And I'm sure it goes without saying that we'd prefer if you keep this one off the books?"

"But of course." Gukiyo turned back to the engi again, "Copy the list of scraps we're trading from her datapad. Jart will be at the craft at spot 4 so ask her to help unload the materials."

Beroos took a short glance at the pad, copying the list in its memory and replied with a short "Acknowledged", and walked out the back door.

Gukiyo addressed Sofia again, "Well that's that. One thing. I know your team is on a business trip right now. But do you have any spare time in the near future? I may have some business proposals for you considering your… discreteness."

Sofia replied, "We'll have to take a look at our schedule and get back to you on that. Till then you can consider the answer as a maybe."

"Excellent. I look forward to your response. Have a profitable trip, folks." Gukiyo said, extending the open palm of his left arm.

Sofia extended her right arm and placed it over the zoltan's palm and nodded. Then she turned around and gestured Rafiq to exit. Once outside and some distance between them and the shop, Rafiq blurted out, "Woah! That was awesome! I know you guys do this often but I can't believe he really thought we were a mercenary crew."

Sofia gave a big smile, "I'm just glad you kept your mouth shut in there and didn't say something stupid and blew our cover."

"What? I'm offended."

"Well you ARE a greenie. Honestly, I had a hunch you knew when to keep your mouth shut. That's why I made you come along. But I was still afraid you might prove me wrong. Anyways, forget about that. Have you ever tried culsiryne stew?"

"Are you crazy? That thing's super expensive. I remember one of my classmates in first semester bragging about how he had some at his rich uncle's place."

"Yeah, I've never tasted it either. They're pretty affordable here since the plants originate on Teg'rysen. C'mon, let's find someone selling it for cheap and find out if it really is that good."

* * *

About half an hour later Sofia and Rafiq entered the spaceport, each carrying a bag containing some culsiryne stew and other foodstuffs. The mantis guard was standing a little distance away from the chair, smoking something in a small pipe.

"Hey Fick. Not getting tired already, are you?" Sofia asked on noticing Rafiq falling behind a bit.

Rafiq was shaken awake from his thoughts. "No. I was just thinking."

"About what?" Sofia slowed down her pace to walk alongside Rafiq.

Rafiq stopped and stared at Sofia's face.

"What?" Sofia stopped also, puzzled.

"Can I ask you something?" Rafiq queried.

"Shoot."

Rafiq looked around to see if anyone was within earshot. "How many mantises have you…uh…you know…"

"Killed?"

Rafiq nodded.

"I don't keep count. Every day can be your last so I like to fight one battle at a time."

Rafiq gave a small "Oh!" and started walking again, as did Sofia.

After a little while Rafiq stopped and asked again. "How did it feel like when you killed your first one?"

"So that's what this is about." Sofia said as she stopped beside Rafiq, "Your first fight's hammering on your conscience, ain't it?"

Rafiq nodded weakly. "I just can't stop thinking about that body of that mantis soldier floating near that escape pod you hauled in. I'm afraid that I'll have nightmares about it when I sleep. He was almost to the escape pod. If it was a few seconds later he might have even survived but I…I killed him. Just inches from survival, I killed him. And he won't be the last."

Sofia felt uncomfortable seeing Rafiq's eyes getting moist, unsure of how to calm the poor greenie. "Well… why didn't you talk about it with Bear?"

Rafiq blinked his eyes clear. "Um…because I think the captain would tell me things that I want to hear, to calm me down. But I think it'd be best if I knew what he was actually thinking and…I…"

"And you thought since I'm the badmouth fighter stereotype, I'd tell it to you straight, with no sugarcoating, eh?"

"I…um…" Rafiq fumbled.

Despite the wetness of Rafiq's eyes, Sofia couldn't help but laugh a little at the rookie's spunk. "You're sorta right. You may not fully know the captain yet but you're quite right about what he'd tell you. In fact, since you weapons guys are trained to be smart, I think you've already processed in your noggin the things any of us would say. Pretty accurately too, if I might hazard a guess. So I'm honestly not really sure what more I can tell you." As she said this, Sofia put a hand on Rafiq's back and started walking again, gently pushing him ahead.

Rafiq walked quietly. Sofia was right. Weapons controllers like him are trained to be strategists – to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of an enemy spacecraft, to figure out multiple ways of attack, to predict the flow of a battle, to have multiple backup plans – to overthink. He had indeed thought about what each of his crewmates would say to him, even Pomeroy with its weird speech patterns. So he wasn't even sure what he wanted to hear from Sofia.

Sofia gave Rafiq a small pat before withdrawing her hand. "We all start somewhere Fick. My first kill was hard on my mind as well. But you know what they say, the first one's always the hardest and it only gets easier. The thing is, it's true. A few battles down the line you'd be surprised that you even thought about this. And let me tell you, that's the real scary thing, how your mind can suddenly accept murder as easy as breakfast."

Rafiq walked slowly, digesting Sofia's words. It didn't make him feel any better but he was relieved to know that even someone like her once felt what he's feeling right now.

Sofia spoke again, "I'm glad you talked about this with someone. Keeping stuff like this bottled up in you can lead to all sorts of mental breakdown and the likes. Zek was right you know. You got real spunk. You wouldn't talk to me about this otherwise. So I know you'll figure it out."

The two of them were now near the ramp of the Space-Kite. They could see 2 engis working on the rear hull of the ship. As they walked up the ramp, even though Sofia didn't say anything particularly helpful, Rafiq felt calmed. He found himself accepting that this feeling he's having is a natural part of becoming a soldier, even though he'd surely have nightmares the next time he sleeps.

"So… was that what you expected me to say?" Sofia asked as they reached the top of the ramp.

"Not exactly. But it kinda helped. Thanks Sofia."

Sofia gave a wink. "Just wait till you have a couple of mantises porting in the weapons bay. You'll know your answer then."

* * *

An hour later, Jart and Beroos carried the escape pod and the last of the scrap materials that were part of the trade off the Space-Kite. Lagardy and Pomeroy had returned with moderate success about half an hour ago. The spaceport authority didn't have any sort of intranet so Pomeroy couldn't remotely hack the log data. And since the data was stored in a mainframe computer in an off-limits area, the two of them couldn't reach it.

However, Lagardy did manage to smooth-talk some information from a human janitor. The janitor didn't know where the Sevril scout was headed but he overheard one of the mantises talking about a bomber craft stationed near the FTL beacon at Sedocho 7 waiting for some supplies before heading into Federation space.

Sofia and Zekko familiarized themselves with the controls of the crew teleporter and Rafiq inserted the new batch of ammo in the Kinetic Payload Preparation Chamber while Lagardy and Pomeroy planned the jump route. Half an hour later, the crew of the Space-Kite was all set and the unassuming little Kestrel class ranger ship took off from the planet Teg'rysen.

* * *

Footnote:

I'm not using the normal earth units of measurement because I find it unlikely that the standard human units of measurement will be prevalent in space with multiple alien species. Some units like hour, minute, I'll allow.

Eyn: Unit of length for measuring distances within a star system.

Cossverse: The portion of the universe that is populated by any of the 6 (discovered thus far) spacefaring species.

The term's a portmanteau of cosmos and universe. I later noticed that coss can be a backronym for Civilization of Sentient Species. I had to come up with a term for the section of the universe that is featured in the game. I can't expect the whole universe to have been mapped because the crystals exist in a hidden sector. So it's a section of the whole universe but definitely way bigger than a galaxy. So I needed a new term.

Gon: A.k.a. gradian, a metric unit of angle. 1 gon = 0.9 degrees. I didn't make this one up; it's a real unit.

Hour: The actual term is Standard Hour but it's shortened to hour by humans since the time length is nearly the same as an earth-hour.

SDC: Spaceport Docking Control.

Great Eye: Mythological deity of the zoltans. However, many zoltans claim that the Great Eye is more than just a myth.

Surg: Local currency in the Rethios star system.

Tressick: Mantis slang, meaning 'cheapskate'.

Businesser: Similar to trader, a species-neutral term for businessman.


	4. Chapter 4 - Skirmish at Sedocho 7

Chapter 4 – Skirmish at Sedocho 7

* * *

Residing on the very outskirt of the Kostaii nebula, Sedocho 7 is one of the few binary star systems in the Sedocho sector. Except for a few automated scientific vessels studying the two stars, the system is otherwise uninhabited. The FTL beacon at Sedocho 7 connects to a long range beacon located inside the Kostaii nebula. About 8 parsecs in diameter and filled with young massive protostars giving the emission nebula an orange-red hue, Kostaii is a spectacular sight to behold and drew many tourists to Sedocho prior to the Federation-Mantis War.

Presently, a large, red, bomber-class craft of the Sevril clan military was stationed a little ways off from the Sedocho 7 FTL beacon. The bomber had recently received a large payload of kinetic ammo and rock mines from a supply craft and was now preparing to jump to the long range beacon inside the nebula. The Kostaii long range beacon would take them to the nebula sector Limawi which houses a few human colonies that the bomber was instructed to destroy with extreme prejudice.

As the bomber was preparing the final checkup procedures before heading out, its crew was startled by the sudden arrival of a small Kestrel class ship. Sedocho 7 being a remote beacon, the most obvious reason for a small civilian craft like a Kestrel to jump here would be because they are either mercenaries or pirates.

Tojjick Lepthin, the captain of the mantis bomber, immediately opened communication channels and hailed the newcomer spacecraft. Having a rather spindly physique, Tojjick had spent the larger duration of his military career being scoffed at by his peers and had to mandible and claw his way up the chain of command. He was recently promoted to captaincy and this bombing run was his first solo mission. Therefore, he wanted it to go as smoothly as possible to make the best impression on both his peers and his crew. You only get one chance at a first impression.

Tojjick spoke on the intercraft comm channel, "This is TojjicklepthinSevril of the Sevril clan military, captain of the vessel Rogdus 4. To whoever is in charge of the Kestrel, you are trespassing in Sevril military space. State your identification and business. And if you know what's good for you, you'll keep your weapons depowered."

Immediately, the image of a thin human wearing a plain checkered shirt appeared on the vidscreen. "Whoops! Didn' kno' this 'ere beacon was all militarized an' stuff. Sorry officer. This here's Cap'n Reyn of the craft Miranda, id 59-Feezy-S4. We was jus' passin' through to Limawi with some cargo." Captain Bear Lagardy gave one of the Space-Kite's cover informations to the bomber.

Tojjick replied, "Miranda, eh? Alright. Slow your velocity while we check your credentials."

"Sure thing, mate", Lagardy said as he slowed the Space-Kite's forward velocity and slowly turned its left side towards the bomber, keeping the Artemis launcher on the starboard hull hidden. He spoke in the Space-Kite's intercom, "Depower the lasers, Rafiq, but keep the Artemis ready."

"Okay, I gotta ask. Why does the captain talk in that silly accent when talking to enemy ships?" Rafiq asked Sofia while depowering the two laser weapons. "He must know that the universal translator doesn't convert accents."

Sofia shrugged her shoulders. "Lagardy claims that he can think like a merc better when talking in that accent. To be honest, the more I think about it, the less sense it makes."

Rafiq shook his head at Sofia's response. Instead of thinking about the captain's odd habits, he decided to study the weapons configuration of the bomber. The large craft featured 4 weapons – a heavy ion cannon, a hull ripper beam, a large-sized missile launcher and lastly, a bomb launcher. The 4 weapons made a terrifying combination if used intelligently.

* * *

"Captain Lepthin. The identification checks out. Miranda is a mercenary vessel of certain reputation under private ownership of a human with the name Josetty Reyn", the voice of the young communications officer informed Tojjick through the intercom.

Tojjick started speaking on the intercraft comm, "Your identification checks out Captain Reyn. According to standard military procedures, now we are supposed to board your vessel for …" Tojjick stopped. He had just remembered what the crew was discussing at breakfast earlier. Some of the crew were concerned regarding the fact that the intel on their 3 target space stations was about 5 divs old. In a time of war that's a significantly long time. If the Federation had figured out that these 3 remote bases were ripe for an attack and fortified them accordingly, the mission could easily end up going particularly badly.

Tojjick was considering the option of hiring this fortuitously appearing mercenary craft to scout out the stations; a quite unorthodox strategy and one which most of his close-minded peers would surely sneer at in disgust. But Tojjick was never one for traditions. He cleared his throat with a short cough before speaking again. "As I was saying, now we are to board your vessel for a thorough check. But we happen to be on a tight schedule. Your id says you're a mercenary vessel, correct?"

"Me an' the crew, we prefer the term privateer, officer. But if ya's lookin' for a job to be done…" Bear baited the hook.

"Maybe. How are your crew at recon?"

"A scoutin' job? That's like free money. We jus' hang around at a distance, let our sensors do all the work and get paid. What'chu got in mind?"

"Space stations. 3 of them. And we need them fast. At most within half a div. Think you can handle it?"

"Mate, you's insultin' us. Miranda 'ere made a run through end-to-end o' the Solcen sector with goods 'em Feders deem illegal in less than 15 hours. Long as ya can pay, you got yo'self a deal. And lemme be honest 'ere, 3 stations ain't gonna be cheap."

"How does 3 stationful of scrap material sound for a payment?"

"Gotcha", Sofia whispered excitedly at Rafiq.

Bear grinned in success. He said in the intercraft commlink, "Woah mate, you wantin' to smash up 3 stations after we scout 'em for ya? That there's military action. I don't wanna be caught in the crossfire in this little war you got goin' on with the Feders."

Tojjic grumbled to himself, "Cowards!" But knowing that the benefits of a recon run would be invaluable, he composed himself and spoke calmly on the comm, "Think about it Captain Reyn. With that much scrap, you and your crew can retire for life. Plus, The Federation will never even know you were involved. Clan's honour."

Without responding to Tojjick's message, Bear powered the starboard side thrusters to slowly start turning to face the bomber. He quickly spoke over the intercom, "Rafiq, power up the lasers. Pomeroy, prepare for some evasive flying. Get ready everyone."

"Captain Reyn, do we have an agreement? Respond." Tojjick was starting to get impatient.

Bear pressed the button for the intercraft comm channel and spoke, "A'ight mate. We read ya'. Jus' one thing."

"What?" Tojjick enquired.

And immediately Tojjick received his answer in the form of an Artemis warhead which flew out of the missile launcher from the far side of the Kestrel and blazed towards his ship.

Tojjick was stunned at seeing the missile. He couldn't give any orders to his crew. He just watched as the missile came and hit dead centre on the hull of the room containing the shield system, exploding silently and chipping away at the hull of the large spacecraft. The in-craft camera in the shield room displayed the shield control system sparking wildly as one layer of the ionic shield surrounding the bomber turned off.

Seeing his crewmember battle the electrical sparks in the shield room shook Tojjick out of his trance. He held back the rage bubbling within him and shouted orders to his crew.

Aboard the Space-Kite, Sofia stood up from her chair beside Rafiq to get a better angle at the vidscreen showing the sensor reading of the enemy craft's layout. She immediately noticed the patterns of doors opening and closing on the bomber and spoke fast, "They're 'porting. Zekko, heads up."

And almost instantly the telltale sound of a teleport was heard in the storage cabin between the life support system and weapons bay which was immediately followed by the noise of claws scrambling against the blast doors to the weapons room.

"Oh that's a bad position", said Sofia as she calmly but rapidly unholstered her laser pistol.

Rafiq stared at the door with frightful eyes while fumbling to release the belt of his holster. Sofia noticed it and said, "Fick, focus. This is my job. You're on weapons."

"Uh right". Rafiq stopped fiddling with his holster and turned back to the weapons control screen just in time to notice the heavy ion cannon on the bomber fire a pulsating blob of ionised particles.

Lagardy was still getting the Space-Kite fully combat-mobile. He chose to let the ion packet hit in order to prepare to dodge the missile that would soon follow. The ion shot hit the shield bubble surrounding the Kestrel, causing minor electrical sparks to appear in the shield controls in front of Zekko and disabled one layer of the ionic shield temporarily.

The burst laser on the Space-Kite was already fully charged and as soon as the shields were disabled by the ion shot, the hull laser became fully charged as well. Rafiq fired an alpha strike. As the 5 laser packets flew towards the bomber, a kinetic warhead flew out from its missile launcher heading towards the Space-Kite. Rafiq immediately recognized the missile as a Hermes, a scaled up version of the Artemis carrying 50% more kinetic payload.

The leading laser packet hit the single remaining shield of the bomber. The mantis craft executed standard evasive maneuvers to dodge the following packets of high energy particles. It managed to evade the following 2 but the last 2 laser shots hit squarely on the weapons bay, immediately depowering the Hermes launcher.

Meanwhile, the Hermes warhead was accelerating towards the Kestrel class ship. Bear quickly spoke over the intercom, "Pomeroy, prep for starboardside max thrust. I'd really hate to mess up our new paint job."

Pomeroy responded, "Confusion, captain. Painting was not…"

"Figure of speech, Poms. Just dodge." Sofia said with annoyance in her voice as she pointed her laser pistol towards the blast doors which were starting to make a whirring noise from the sides.

When the Hermes almost reached the shield layer over the right wing of the Space-Kite, Bear quickly ordered, "Now." Pomeroy flicked a switch and the impulse engines on the right side of the ship spew out dark matter particles resulting in a net leftward motion of the entire craft. The missile was unable to recalculate its trajectory so close to the ship and flew past the Space-Kite harmlessly.

The missile, now moving through space at a blazing speed, would run out of fuel very soon and the moment the fuel reserve reaches zero, the k-ammo would self-detonate, sending pieces of the missile in all directions and ensuring that it is no longer a threat to any ship in the future.

The scrambling of claws on the blast doors stopped. Immediately, the doors slid open to show 2 very menacing looking mantises standing at the doorframe. Sofia fired a shot from her laser pistol while yelling in the intercom, "Zek. They're in."

The heavy ion pulse having just dissipated, Zekko sent a 'refresh' pulse to the shield layers and started towards the weapons room.

In the weapons room, the leading mantis ducked the laser shot which hit one of the tool crates in the storage room which landed on the second mantis' foot. Rafiq turned on his chair, his hand already heading for the holster. The leading mantis snarled and leaped towards Sofia. Sofia hopped back a bit and the mantis landed right in front of her with its claw poised for a strike.

Suddenly an odd loud whoosh sound emanated from the ceiling of the weapons room. Rafiq, Sofia and the 2 mantises all looked up at the ceiling, near the centre of which a spheroid metallic object was materialising from within a spatial rift. All 4 pairs of eyes immediately bulged in horror at the realization of what that thing was.

* * *

Instantly, the metallic shell of the breach bomb exploded into hundreds of shrapnels, all directed towards the portion of the ceiling straight above it. Most of the concentrated blast of sharp metallic shrapnels punctured through that portion of the hull of the weapons bay. A few pieces of shrapnel were reflected off the hull back down towards the occupants of the room.

Sofia immediately shifted her body, standing lateral to the rain of sharp blades. As a result, she only suffered minor grazes but no direct hit from any shrapnel. The mantis that was about to attack her tried to jump backwards to the storage room but wasn't fast enough. He managed to cover his face but his body's front side was hit with multiple shrapnels as he fell from the impact on his buddy standing at the doorway and both of them tumbled inelegantly into the storage room.

The moment Rafiq saw the breach bomb he jumped out of the weapons control chair to hide behind it but he was too slow. His entire right side was pelted with multiple shrapnels sending him crashing on the floor beside the chair, writhing in pain as blood started seeping out of the wounds, soaking his clothes. But the excruciating pain was the second thing on his mind. The first was the gaping hole in the ceiling, through which the air in the room was now flowing out into the vacuum of space.

Since gravlock system is mandatory on all spacecrafts, the occupants in the room were not in any danger of getting vented out into space along with the outrushing air. However, they would soon start to asphyxiate in the lack of a breathable atmosphere.

Suddenly, the forward starboard side door of the weapons bay slid open and Zekko appeared in the doorframe. And seeing the chaos in the weapons room, even his stony face displayed an expression of shock.

Sofia hopped over to Rafiq's side and, quickly assessing his injuries, hoisted him up by his left arm. Zekko fired a suppressing shot towards the storage room wherein the 2 boarders were starting to get back on their feet. Sofia hurriedly spoke in the intercom while walking to the door with Rafiq, "Cap, weapon's breached and Fick's got multiple shraps. I'm taking him to the medbay."

Lagardy replied immediately, "Copy that. Zekko, get back to shields. I'm venting."

As Sofia helped Rafiq to the medbay, the 2 blast doors to the portside airlock opened on their left, displaying the beautiful colours of the Kostaii nebula beyond them, as air started flowing out of the room into space.

Inside the medbay, Sofia hastily laid Rafiq on the medical bed and powered up the medbot control system. She quickly booted up the emergency healing program and immediately, the thousands of medical nanobots that were lying dormant within both their bodies, started repairing the damaged cells. However, since the tiny medbots can't remove shrapnels embedded in a patient's body, Sofia grabbed the de-shrapper from the wall-cabinet.

In the meantime, Rafiq used his left arm to get his datapad out of his pant pocket. He booted up the remote link to the weapons controls and soon, he could control the weapons from his datapad, albeit with slight latency.

As Sofia started to pull out the shrapnels one by one out of Rafiq's right arm, he fired an Artemis with his left. Tojjick noticed the Artemis and gave precise piloting commands allowing his ship to dodge the missile effortlessly. Noticing that his own missile was semi-repaired, Tojjick bypassed the reactor power from the hull beam to the Hermes.

Rafiq noticed from the in-craft camera footage that the 2 mantises were smacking their claws on the weapons controls and were about to reach the outer layer of charging conduits. He immediately shunted some of the reactor power around, allowing the Artemis to get depowered when the 2 mantises cut the wire in the conduits. However, this gave time for both the laser weapons to power up and Rafiq fired another alpha strike.

The bomber tried evasive manoeuvres but 3 laser shots out of 5 hit their target – one disabling the single layer of ionic shielding allowing the other 2 shots to go through unimpeded, one hitting the life support system, disabling it entirely, and the other hitting the engines room, lowering the manoeuvrability of the impulse engines.

Noticing the extensive damage to Rogdus 4, Tojjick ordered his crew to repair the life support first but he also directed 2 crewmembers to the cargo bay. He had decided to try a new strategy, one nobody would be crazy enough to predict.

Meanwhile, the weapons bay of the Space-Kite was slowly losing breathable atmosphere and the 2 mantises were now banging their claws on the blast door controls to get to the next room.

Suddenly, the large Sevril bomber picked up speed and flew towards the Space-Kite. Bear was quite surprised in this manoeuvre as the bomber came much closer than the minimum safe distance for inter-craft combat.

The heavy ion on the bomber fired again. Realizing that Tojjick had a plan, Bear chose to let the ion shot hit, dropping the shields down to level 1 again. Suddenly, the cargo bay ramp of Rogdus 4 opened and 2 mantises in EVA suits pushed out 3 spheroid objects, which slowly floated towards the Space-Kite.

* * *

Bear was confused. The shapes of the 3 objects were familiar to him but he couldn't remember where he had seen them before. He spoke on the intercom, "Hey guys. Does anyone recognise what those 3 things are?"

Almost instantly, Zekko shouted from the shields room, "Captain, those are rock mines. Reverse thrust FAST!"

Bear immediately remembered what they were. Made by rock outcast pirates, rock mines were a particularly nasty type of mines. They were about 4 k-ammo's worth of kinetic payload jammed inside a boarding drone's chassis along with the drone's CPU. If a rock mine latched onto a ship's hull, it would use a drill to burrow in the ship's hull and soon after, burst in a tremendous explosion of hot metal and shrapnel. They were the bane of any ship passing through areas prowled by rock pirates. 3 of them would definitely be enough to crack a Kestrel wide open.

Bear shouted on the intercom, "Reverse thrust, Pome…"

Pomeroy cut him off, "Engine level, incapable of reverse thrust of magnitude required to outrun rock mines. Suggestion, evasive flight manoeuvres."

"Crap!" Bear stuttered trying to think of a solution. "Reverse anyway. It'll buy us some time."

"Roger", Pomeroy replied and angled the impulse engines forward and gunned them. The Space-Kite started accelerating in reverse.

"Rafiq, can you shoot them down?" asked Captain Lagardy.

Rafiq mentally analysed the 3 mines' trajectory while he depowered the hull laser and started charging up the Artemis. He replied, "I may be able to take down the last one with a manual shot if you can give me some time for the burst laser to charge up."

Bear made some mental calculations of his own. "Alright. You got it. Everyone, brace for it!" He then took a deep breath and cracked his knuckles. "Pomeroy! Let's show 'em how to fly!" As he spoke, Bear placed both his palms flat on the flight control screen.

As the first rock mine barrelled down towards the Space-Kite, the Hermes on Rogdus 4 charged up to full and Tojjick immediately fired the missile. As was the mantis code of conduct, there's no kill like overkill.

However, upon noticing the missile launcher charging up, Bear had already taken into account the Hermes firing. In fact, a crucial part of his crazy plan depended on Tojjick firing it. Bear turned all impulse engines backwards and slowed down the Kestrel's reverse velocity, rapidly coming to a standstill.

The Hermes quickly outflew the mine farthest from the Kestrel. As the closest mine detected proximity to a spacecraft and prepared its hooks and drills, Bear pointed the starboard and port side engines diametrically opposite and fired both of them backwards at maximum thrust. The resulting torque rotated the body of the Kestrel about its longitudinal axis while the craft started travelling forwards.

The first mine was unable to recalculate its trajectory fast enough and passed by under the Kestrel. But it soon turned around and came after the ship from behind.

The Hermes outflew the second mine and came towards the Space-Kite head on, its guidance system able to account for the ship's screw-driver manoeuvre. As the missile reached the shield layer, Bear angled all thrusters downwards giving the ship a net upwards velocity. The missile passed by the underside of the ship harmlessly and landed squarely on the mine coming behind the Kestrel. The nigh-impossible accuracy of this manoeuvre stunned Tojjick. He wondered aloud whether the missile hitting the mine was a fluke.

Most of the debris from the explosion landed on the shields harmlessly. However, a single piece went and hit the second mine as it neared the Space-Kite, damaging its proximity detection system and thus disabling its drills. The mine careened towards the shield room unguided and exploded on making contact with the hull. The shockwave on the shield room's hull damaged the shield generator, dropping the shield to level 1 and sparks from the generator started a fire in the shield room.

The fire didn't bother Zekko in the slightest as his organic stone skin was able to withstand temperatures up to 1200K. He simply slammed his large feet over the areas which were on fire, covering the flames and putting them out with relative ease.

The burst laser charged to full and Rafiq disabled the automatic targeting on it. He took careful aim and fired it, while accounting for the datapad's latency.

Unfortunately, all 3 laser packets missed the last rock mine. However, the shots passed by close enough to overheat the mine's k-ammo payload, exploding it outside the Space-Kite's shield layer and therefore, making the debris harmless to the ship.

By this time, the two half-asphyxiated mantis boarders had managed to manually override the blast door controls in the almost-vacuum weapons bay. The blast doors led them out from the almost-vacuum weapons bay into the room next to the portside airlock. However, they found, to their abject horror, that the doors to the airlock and the outer blast doors in said airlock were all fully open to space. And the room that they were now in was entirely devoid of any atmosphere.

The two of them scrambled to get the remote control pad for the teleporter system out of their pocket as they both collapsed on the floor, gasping for breath as air rushed out of their lungs. In their final moments of consciousness, they pressed the return button on the control pad, wishing they had the foresight of doing it earlier. By the time their bodies materialised inside Rogdus 4's teleporter room, they were both dead.

As soon as the 2 boarders teleported out, Captain Lagardy closed all external doors and opened all internal ones, except the weapons room, to speedily balance the atmosphere within the ship so the hull breach in the weapons room can be repaired in relative safety.

* * *

Due to the forward velocity of the Space-Kite, the ship was now quite close to the bomber – closer than the safe combat distance. But this time, it was the Kestrel's turn. Rafiq disabled auto-targeting on the Artemis and fired the missile manually. Tojjick noticed the incoming warhead and, to account for his weakened engines from the prior attack, ordered his ship to move such that the Artemis hits a non-essential part of the hull and not on any vital systems.

But Rafiq didn't aim for any system. And so, despite the bomber's movements, the Artemis was able to land on its intended target, the still-open ramp of the cargo bay. The explosion from the Artemis broke the hinges on one side of the ramp. The two mantis crewmembers in spacesuits were further back in the room and remained unharmed. However, the shockwave from the blast activated one of the rock mines that were kept near the top of the ramp for a future attack.

The hooks on the rock mine immediately activated and clamped down on the floor of the cargo bay. The two mantis crew rushed towards the mine to disable it. But before they could even touch it, the mine exploded, tearing off an entire section of the hull on the floor of the cargo bay and sending violent shockwaves through the entire body of the large bomber.

Crates of cargo flew out the hole in the bomber's cargo bay. Visible amongst them was a mangled EVA suit which, until very recently, had a live crew inside. The other crewmember, still alive in his spacesuit, screamed for help as his wriggling body floated farther and farther away from the bomber.

By this time, Sofia had managed to fully de-shrap Rafiq's right arm. Now there were just three shrapnels remaining which were embedded in his right leg. Rafiq grabbed hold of the de-shrapper from Sofia in his now-healed right arm and told her, "I got this. You go take care of the weapons breach."

"Are you sure?" Sofia asked, unconvinced that the greenie could de-shrap himself effectively.

"I just saw you do it. Go already." Rafiq insisted.

Sofia nodded and ran out the now-open door.

"Pomeroy, go help Sofia with the breach. We need all weapons online, fast." Bear spoke on the intercom while opening all doors to the weapons bay. Air rushed from the nearby rooms into the weapons bay and then out the hull breach in the weapons' bay's ceiling. But the outrushing air provided a semi-breathable atmosphere for Sofia and Pomeroy to work in.

Running in the weapons bay, Sofia took a large breath and grabbed one of the compressed carbolinum sheets that were kept in every room for sealing breaches while Pomeroy entered the room and picked up the hull repair gel sprayer. Sofia held the sheet up to the hole in the ceiling, covering it and slowing down the outflow of air while Pomeroy started spraying the repair gel around its edges. The gel activated the nanofibres in the carbolinum and caused them to expand and latch on to the broken nanofibers in the carbolinum hull around the breach hole. The nanofibers bonded with each other quickly, thereby repairing the hull.

Rafiq used the de-shrapper to carefully remove the metal pieces from his leg, all the while keeping an eye on his datapad.

The breach bomb on Rogdus 4 fired again. This time, however, Bear made the side thrusters give a sudden downward thrust which messed up the telemetry of the bomb and it materialized outside and above the body of the Kestrel, exploding harmlessly as the metal shrapnels were intercepted by the ionic shield.

"Zekko reporting. The fire's out but shields are down to level 1. Repairing", Zekko gave a sitrep as he opened up the cover of the shield generator to fix the damage caused by the fire.

"You killed four of my crew", came a shout from the universal translator. Tojjick was furious. "You're dead. You hear me, merc meatsacks? You're all dead!"

Immediately the bomb launcher on Rogdus 4 was depowered and the hull ripper beam started charging up.

Rafiq fired an Artemis quickly followed by a volley from the burst laser. Unfortunately, despite its weakened engines, Tojjick was able to effectively dodge the missile about to hit the shield room. And by the time the burst laser shots reached the bomber, the shield generator was repaired to full and the second layer shield was already activated. The first 2 laser packets did manage to hit the shields, temporarily disabling both layers but the third one missed.

Rafiq grumbled and depowered the Artemis. He wasn't going to waste as much k-ammo as in his first battle. So he repowered the hull laser.

The missile launcher on the bomber shot another Hermes. Without Pomeroy at the engine room performing minor angular adjustments of the impulse thrusters, Lagardy used a standard dodging manoeuvre to bypass the missile. This move, however, allowed the weapons controller aboard Rogdus 4 to track the Space-Kite's telemetry for the next few seconds, meaning that it was wide open for the next attack, which came immediately in the form of a pulsating blob of ion from the heavy ion cannon.

Zekko was still operating on the shields so the heavy ion packet hit the single layer of shield, disabling it and causing some threatening-looking, but quite harmless, sparks in the shield generator right in Zekko's face.

Without any shields, the Space-Kite was fully exposed to the hull beam which was still charging. Rafiq yelled in the intercom, "Pomeroy! Beam's coming! We need shields!" as he yanked out the last shrapnel from his leg and swore at his datapad seeing that the Space-Kite's hull laser wasn't yet fully charged.

In the weapons room, the breach was nearly sealed with a few small openings still remaining. Pomeroy heard Rafiq over the intercom and started, "Importance of shiel…" Sofia snatched the gel sprayer from Pomeroy and said, "I can calculate too. Go!"

Pomeroy quickly arrived in the shield room and crouched down beside Zekko and, with a short glance, analyzed the damage in the shield generator. He extended his generally-formless metallic arms which immediately formed crude tendrils that slithered their way to the damaged regions and the nanomachines started repairing them.

But before the repair was complete, the hull beam fired. The searing red hot photonic stream struck the Kestrel, passing over the mostly-empty planning room behind the cockpit, the sensor room and the door control room.

Rafiq winced at the damage while hopping down from the medical bed. He quickly fired his finally-ready alpha strike. The 5 laser packets flew threateningly towards the large bomber. But Tojjick was ready for it. He used Bear's strategy and angled his impulse engines to provide Rogdus 4 a screw-driver spin. Although the 2 leading lasers hit the shields getting Rafiq's hopes up, the spin allowed the large craft to dodge the rest of the laser shots.

Rafiq gave out a frustrating sigh and quickly put the de-shrapper back in the medical cabinet, turned off the medbot control system and ran back to the weapons room. He entered the room to see Sofia drop the repair gel on her stool, having completed the hull repair. Rafiq quickly grabbed some spare wiring from a wall-cabinet and started reconnecting the outer charging conduits in the weapons system.

Sofia looked at the dark outline of the Space-Kite and Rogdus 4 on Rafiq's datapad – a result of their disabled sensors. But she was thinking of something else.

"Captain?"

"What is it Sofia?"

"They're down 4 crew."

"I noticed. But we don't know how many are left. Are you sure?"

"Zekko?"

Zekko and Pomeroy were still repairing the shield generator. But knowing that an engi's nanomachine tendrils can repair faster than he ever could, Zekko stood up and punched his palm decisively. "Let's do it."

Bear nodded. "Alright. Pomeroy, hurry up with the repair and get back to your post. I'm shunting some power from the engines to the teleporter."

Rafiq looked up at Sofia in shock, mid-repair. For a human, teleporting inside a mantis ship was nigh-suicidal. He barely managed to whisper, "Good luck Sof."

Sofia nodded silently and headed out to the teleporter room. Zekko soon entered the weapons room and followed her out, giving Rafiq a little salute.

Rafiq quickly finished repairing the wiring and sat on the weapons control chair just in time to see both the heavy ion and the Hermes launcher on Rogdus 4 fire simultaneously.

Bear gritted his teeth. "Pommy? Are you in engines yet?"

"Not yet captain", Pomeroy replied as he hurriedly reattached the cover to the shield generator.

Bear cringed. He couldn't dodge both attacks without Pomeroy's minute adjustments. And to top it off, the second layer of shields wasn't ready yet and the hull beam on Rogdus 4 was fully charged for another lase as soon as the ion hits. And this time, he couldn't expect Rafiq to shoot one down since neither their laser weapons would be fully charged before they hit. His mind raced for a solution and came up with the only possible one.

"Alright. Tactical damage it is. Everyone, brace again." Bear spoke over the intercom and swerved the Space-Kite sideways. The ion pulse missed its target but the Hermes corrected its telemetry and slammed straight on the large room beside the starboard airlock and started a fire.

Bear gave an audible whew as he vented the room. Despite the hull integrity of the Space-Kite dropping to 35%, Bear was glad that he was able to prevent the Hermes from hitting any system rooms.

"All right. We're all set", Sofia said from the teleporter room.

"Gotcha", replied Rafiq and fired an alpha strike for the bomber's medbay. The first 2 burst laser packets struck the shields but the third missed. The leading hull laser also missed and just as Rafiq was about to punch the controls in frustration, the last hull laser struck home on the medbay.

"Yes! Their medbay's down!" Rafiq was elated.

"Grundi! Sunn! Don't either of you dare die!", Bear ordered.

With a short salute, Sofia pressed the depart button on the crew teleporter and it noisily created a spatial rift surrounding her and Zekko which immediately transported them to the broken medbay on Rogdus 4.

* * *

Sofia and Zekko appeared in the large medical bay to find the bodies of the 2 mantises who boarded the Space-Kite just a few minutes ago and a third mantis, wounded but alive, clawing feverishly at the broken medbot control system trying to repair the damage from the laser strike. The mantis immediately turned around upon hearing the rift appear behind her and fired a shot from her laser pistol towards the sudden boarding party. Sofia quickly ducked the shot and returned fire from her own pistol with Zekko following suit.

In the bomber's cockpit, Tojjick was caught completely unawares by the 2 boarders. He never imagined that a human mercenary crew can have the guts to board a mantis military ship. He'd have considered the boarders suicidal if 4 of his crew weren't already killed by said mercenary craft's attacks.

While the rest of Tojjick's crew scrambled towards the medbay to repel the boarders, Rafiq fired an Artemis which struck the shields room of Rogdus 4, damaging it and dropping the shields to just a single layer once again. Tojjick retaliated with an ion shot followed soon after by a Hermes.

However, by this time Pomeroy had returned to his station in the engine room and was able to perform minute vector adjustments on the impulse thrusters, allowing Lagardy to evade both the ion shot as well as the large missile.

In the bomber's medbay, Sofia and Zekko were trading shots from their laser pistols with the wounded mantis and almost had her pinned down when 2 mantises entered the medbay. The newcomers deftly manoeuvered over the overturned medical bed behind which Zekko and Sofia took cover and landed right in front of them.

Rafiq saw what was happening on his vidscreen and spoke on the crew-comm channel, "Guys! Get out of the medbay. I got this."

Sofia quickly ducked a slashing strike from the mantis in front of her and kicked at his legs. As the mantis stumbled back, she yelled to Zekko, "You heard 'im. Let's run in the doors."

Zekko double-palm-slammed the mantis he was engaged with and quickly followed in Sofia's heels out of the medbay and into the room beside it which housed a level one doors system.

As soon as the 2 of them were out of the medbay, Rafiq fired an alpha strike. Of the leading 3 shots from the burst laser, 2 missed but 1 managed to hit the single remaining layer of shields of the bomber, allowing both the hull laser packets to strike the medbay, causing a hull breach in one of its walls.

Sofia and Zekko quickly re-entered the medbay to find the wounded mantis lying dead near the breach hole. The other 2 mantises, hurt by the shrapnel from the breach and broken machinery, were leaning on the overturned medical bed, wheezing. Sofia and Zekko swiftly moved in on them and held them in chokeholds until they both passed out.

Sofia said to Rafiq, "Thanks for that, Fick. Just an FYI, the hull integrity over here's at 22% so watch your shots, okay?"

Rafiq replied, "Roger. Holding fire till you two give… wait a sec! Door movement from both cockpit and weapons. Heads up!"

Sofia and Zekko quickly moved out of the medbay into the large room next to it, just in time to see a burly mantis coming through the door on the other side which led to the weapons room. The two of them sprinted across the length of the room with Zekko pushing the leaping mantis aside and ran straight into the weapons control room.

The mantis quickly followed on their heels and opened fire on them from his laser pistol which hit Zekko squarely on his back. Zekko lost his footing at the strike but managed to grab the weapons control chair and regain his balance while Sofia returned fire. The mantis ducked behind a stack of carbolinum sheets while the door opened and Tojjick entered the weapons room, his antennae standing straight in fury.

Lagardy recognised Tojjick on the live footage from the crew teleporter's biometric scanner. He quickly spoke over the crew-comm, "Hey you two! The thin one's Tojjick. Try and see if you can catch him alive."

Zekko replied while firing a laser shot at the mantis captain, "Easier said than done, cap'n."

"Hey Rafiq," Bear continued. "If their captain is fighting that means…"

"The cockpit's probably unmanned!" Rafiq almost jumped out of his chair at the realization. "Sofia! Zekko! Out of the weapons room, NOW!"

"C'mon Sofia", Zekko called as he opened the door leading out on their side of the weapons room into the next room which housed the life support system. Sofia dived from her position behind the weapons control chair and slid across the floor. Zekko entered the room and pulled her inside and slammed the door shut.

Almost instantly, an Artemis rocketed out of the missile launcher on the Space-Kite and smashed heavily on the weapons chamber of Rogdus 4, disabling the Hermes and causing enough electrical sparks in the weapons control that a fire erupted in the chamber.

Sofia and Zekko immediately entered the room while the two mantis occupants were still dazed from this attack. Zekko jumped over the flames and quickly grabbed hold of the larger mantis from the back with his big stony hands. Tojjick recovered faster than his weapons controller and, upon noticing the situation, quickly retreated out of the room. Sofia raced after the spindly mantis captain while Zekko tried to choke the mantis squirming in his fists.

The muscular mantis was proving to be rather difficult to hold on to for Zekko. So, instead of trying to overpower the mantis, Zekko simply strolled quickly into the fire with his prisoner and just stood there amidst the flames as the mantis started coughing, both from the stony fists that were squeezing on his tracheas and the smoke from the fire.

Tojjick ran back to the cockpit and then down a hatch to a corridor below. He ran down the corridor a little ways and entered the escape pod bay at the end. He quickly started to prepare an escape pod.

Tojjick still couldn't believe how poorly the battle went. Despite piloting a heavily armed bomber against a puny Kestrel, five of his nine crew was brutally killed, two lay unconscious and asphyxiating to their deaths in the vented medbay and the last one was being choked by a rock boarder inside a burning room. Retreat was the only sensible option.

Just as soon as the escape pod came online, Sofia entered the pod bay. She quickly analyzed the scenario and flicked the overcharge switch on her laser pistol. In the time it took for Tojjick to turn his face around to see the human, Sofia was already lining up her shot.

She fired. Not at the fleeing mantis captain, but at the escape pod controls.

The pistol burst-fired three laser packets, two of which hit the escape pod controls, immediately disabling the charged pod. Tojjick's compound eyes bulged as he realized that he was now stranded. He snarled and leapt for Sofia before she could even blink.

Tojjick landed on Sofia heavily, pinning her down on the floor with his 4 legs and raised his claw for a lethal strike on her throat. She whacked the mantis captain's waist hard with the pistol causing Tojjick to flinch. She wriggled out from under his feet, jumped up and swung her right leg for a roundhouse kick. But Tojjick sidestepped the kick and slashed at her right leg, creating a deep gash from which blood spurted out.

Pain shot through her leg as Sofia struggled to keep balance. But Tojjick wasn't finished. He leapt again and slammed her against the wall with his body. Her pistol went flying while Tojjick followed up with a double kick into her lower abdomen. Sofia crumbled down to the floor, writhing in pain, as Tojjick spread both his claws wide, getting ready to behead her.

* * *

All three occupants of the Kestrel saw the live footage.

Rafiq panicked, "Oh no! Port her back!"

Pomeroy responded, "Negative. Location of Sofia Grundi, lower deck, outside crew teleporter range."

Bear yelled, "Sunn? Where the hell are you?"

"Dropping down the hatch. ETA, 8 seconds.", Zekko replied as he jumped down the hatch in the cockpit and landed on the corridor below with a loud crash.

Rafiq cried out, "That won't be enough. Sofia!"

* * *

Her crewmates' screams on the comm snapped Sofia out of her pain-induced daze. Clenching her teeth, she looked up and saw what the mantis was about to do and she did the only thing her body could. She slipped down on the floor under Tojjick's legs as his claws struck each other midair, barely centimetres above her head.

Still down on the floor, Sofia kicked Tojjick in the back with her uninjured left foot. Tojjick tumbled forwards but used his two forward legs to regain balance and turned around swiftly. Sofia rolled on her side trying to get away from Tojjick but he grabbed both her legs. Sofia screamed in pain as Tojjick yanked her back and slammed a foot down hard on her left knee.

Tojjick spoke, while he raised his left claw to strike, "You're not getting away from this, human. I'm not going down alone."

Sofia realized that Tojjick was about to do the same thing that female mantis did to Sean, stab straight through the heart. Her mind raced to find a solution. Tojjick gave a menacing snarl and delivered the blow.

Sofia reached out with her right arm and grabbed the incoming claw and pulled hard, redirecting the stabbing blow to the right side of her body, near the armpit, while at the same time lowering Tojjick's body closer to her. As the mantis' claw dug deep in her right armpit, shooting a tremendous jolt of pain to her brain, Sofia, in a quick motion, reached out with her left arm and unholstered Tojjick's laser pistol from his belt – although she couldn't fire the pistol since they were all coded to their users' DNA, it certainly wasn't useless – and smashed it hard on the mantis' head.

She screamed in pain and fury and smashed Tojjick's head with the pistol again, harder this time. Blue blood oozed out of the wound. Tojjick backed his head outside of Sofia's arm's range and drew his right arm backwards for another stab but something caught it from behind. He turned his head just in time to see Zekko's stony fist flying towards his face.

Tojjick's unconscious body crumpled down on the floor like a rag.

* * *

"Whew!" Sofia sighed heavily as she threw Tojjick's pistol away. "You really should jog more often, you know that?"

"Sorry," Zekko apologized. "That fat jurliko put up more of a fight than I thought. C'mon, let's get you above deck so you can port back. Can you stand up?"

Sofia tried to stand but grunted from the pain. "Don't think so. My legs are hurting like hell. I got no feeling in my right arm and I'm pretty sure my kidneys are haemorrhaging from that bugface's double kick. Oh man, I'm dead tired."

"Just wait till we get you to the medbay before you fall asleep, okay?" Bear spoke over the intercom, "Rafiq, get the stretcher from the medbay to the teleporter. Pomeroy, prep the brig. Zekko, get Sofia upstairs first. Then go get Tojjick before he wakes up."

Zekko lifted Sofia up as gently as he could while she started to fall in a daze. He turned around and then slammed one of his legs on all four of Tojjick's. The sound of the mantis captain's legs' chitinous exoskeleton cracking was heard loudly in the Space-Kite over the intercom.

"Sunn! What gives? Don't kill him! Jeez!" Bear was frantic.

"Don't worry captain, he'll live. That was just payback for hurting Sofia."

* * *

Sofia appeared through the spatial rift in the Space-Kite's teleporter room to see Rafiq and Bear waiting for her. They lifted her on the stretcher and carried her to the medbay.

As the medbots inside her body started to heal her, Sofia gave a weak smile and said in a broken, wheezing voice that was barely above a whisper, "What a day, eh Fick? Less than quarter of an hour ago, I was pulling shrapnels out of you and now…"

Bear spoke, "Yep, the tables turn very quickly in combat. Get used to that, Rafiq. And you, Grundi, shut your trap and go to sleep. You had one hell of a fight back there. Now rest and let the medbots work."

Zekko's voice came over the inter-craft comm, "Hey captain, good news. We got one more prisoner. I was gathering up all the bodies and found one of the dudes that we choked out cold in the medbay, lying in the doors' room. Looks like he actually managed to wake up and crawl out of the medbay before it fully vented and into the next room before passing out again."

"Brilliant! Let's get him and Tojjick into the brig. And then we'll go see what we can find on their ship."

* * *

Footnote:

Ion weapons temporarily disable systems without causing any permanent damage to said system or the hull; useful for suppressing the operation of a particular system and also for disabling shields for follow-up attacks.

Hull ripper beam: Beam weapons fire a coherent stream of hyperactive photons. Since these are beams of light, they cannot be dodged (in the short range where skirmish battles take place). The hull ripper beam is designed to provide crippling damage to a craft's hull.

Bombs are self-teleporting explosives. These do not cause any major damage to a spacecraft's hull but are very efficient at damaging systems and crew.

De-shrapper: Electromagnetic forceps for removing shrapnels by magnetic and or electrostatic attraction (depending on the type of shrapnel). The electromagnetic field also helps to temporarily halt nerve signals near the shrapnel, thereby removing any sense of pain from the area.

EVA suit: Extra Vehicular Activity suit (i.e. spacesuit)

Carbolinum: Hull material invented by the slugs. Despite being structurally weaker than the previously-used steel-titanium alloys, carbolinum is used almost universally for all spacecraft hull due to its fibrous structure which can be repaired quickly and on the fly by even the naivest civilian crew, by using a special repair gel also invented by the slugs. As an added bonus, it is more thermally resistive to re-entry heating than any other hull material. Unfortunately, its chemical bonds react with the high magnetic field disturbance of CMEs (coronal mass ejections) from stellar flares resulting in random hotspots around the hull of a spacecraft which can sometimes start fires inside the craft.

Biometric scanner: A secondary feature of a crew teleporter system – a scanner that tracks the biometric signals of boarders on their target ship in case the main sensor subsystem of the boarding ship is malfunctioning or unavailable.

Laser pistols work by firing a pulse of high energy photons which upon hitting their target causes focal radiation burn to the skin and damages to nerves and tissues underneath, making them a very effective sidearm for both non-lethal and lethal attacks (a few well-placed shots on the brain are enough to kill the target).

The overcharge function on a laser pistol is built in as a last resort option. It fully drains the pistol's fuel cell to burst fire 3 shots in quick succession, rather than the normal single laser shot. Following an overcharge shot, the pistol is required to be recharged at charging terminal so the shooter is left with a useless firearm.

Jurliko: Rock slang for mantis. Means 'four legs'.


	5. Chapter 5 - New recruit

Chapter 5 – New recruit

* * *

Sofia stepped out of the military infirmary and did a stretch. Her body still felt weak and tired but she knew it was only in her mind. The physicians at the infirmary confirmed that the medbots within her body worked perfectly and that she was physically absolutely fit. Now she was getting hungry so she headed towards the hanger.

The Space-Kite arrived at the Federation ranger outpost at the spacetown Shahrengil in the Limawi sector around 2 hours ago. And immediately upon docking, Sofia headed straight to the infirmary. As for the others, Bear took Rafiq to report his performance as their probationary gunner, Zekko helped the outpost's soldiers escort their two prisoners, the injured Tojjick and his only surviving crew Mootig, to interrogations and Pomeroy went to deliver the intel they recovered from Rogdus 4's comm-logs and hard-drives.

The hanger was a short walk from the infirmary and along the way, she passed by a little restaurant from which came a sweet aroma of roggil soup and fried tihaak shrimp. Unfortunately, in her haste she forgot to take any money with her and Shahrengil had no bioscan-banking facility. So she just quickened her pace.

In a few minutes she arrived at the small military hanger. There were 2 station defence crafts and a med-evac craft docked in the hanger besides the Space-Kite. She walked past various military personnel and civilians milling about their own businesses, none of them having any idea that less than a quarter div ago they were the target of a devastating attack.

Upon getting closer, she saw that two humans and two engis were busy working at fixing the many dents on the Space-Kite's hull. Zekko stood near the ship with his neck craned to see the repair work.

"Yo Zek!", Sofia said with a pat on Zekko's back.

Zekko turned and smiled. "Hey, you're back early. I'm guessing the docs gave you a clean bill of health?"

"Yep. Medbots worked just as they're supposed to. How'd the interrogation go?"

"It's still going. Tojjick seems like he's going to be hard to crack. They might need a slug interrogator. But that Mootig guy seemed easier. I didn't stick around to find out; had to report at the rock wing. That took a while so I got hungry."

"You too, eh? While waiting at the infirmary, I realized that I forgot to take any money so I came straight back to the ship as soon as I could."

"Oh, poor you! Here you go. I was saving this for later. Don't worry, already had some myself." Zekko produced a pancake from one of his pockets.

"Thanks Zek." Sofia took the pancake and removed the wrapping. A nice fruity scent filled her nostrils. She gave a large bite. "Mmm sijlee beans. Yum! So how goes the repair work?"

"Looks pretty good. I think they're probably finishing up now. Hopefully Pomeroy gets here soon and does a thorough inspection. Speaking of… isn't that him over there?" Zekko pointed at the engi entering the hanger through the door farthest from them.

"Hm?" Sofia craned her head to see. "Yep, that's him."

By the time Pomeroy reached them, Sofia had finished with the pancake and was wiping her hands on the wrapper.

Zekko asked, "So Pomeroy, what's the sitrep?"

"Information acquired from Rogdus 4, substantial. Contained Sevril clan troop movements in Sedocho, Limawi and Haarito sectors, encryption keys for certain priority transmissions and location of 3, possibly 4, bases."

"Yeah, we already guessed as much. But what are they planning to do about the actual craft?" Sofia questioned. "I mean, we left the thing just floating there at Sedocho 7, ripe for the taking by looters."

Pomeroy lowered his voice. "Information secrecy level, significant. A small crew will leave within the hour to hide Rogdus 4 inside Kostaii nebula. Goal, to attempt to receive more Sevril transmissions, although the likelihood of that is low. Probability that the Sevril clan has realized that the craft has been captured, high – 76.41%, to be precise."

"That's good to hear", Sofia said. "I hope the ship won't already be scrapped by pirates by the time they get…"

"Uhm, excuse me." One of the humans of the repair crew spoke from on top of the Space-Kite, interrupting Sofia.

All three of them turned their heads upwards. Zekko asked, "Yes?"

"We're finished with our repairs. So if you'd, uh, like to give a look see…"

"Affirmative. Gratitude." Pomeroy said as he stepped towards the ladder that the repair crew had set up on one side of the cargo ramp.

* * *

Bear and Rafiq returned just as the repair crew were leaving.

"Ah, repair's all done I see. Looks like this time we did get a paint job.", Bear spoke cheerfully. "What did the docs say, Grundi? Everything looking fine?"

Sofia replied, "Ayup. Gunning at 100% health here. How'd it go with the greenie? Did he say something stupid?"

"You just can't resist taking a jab at me, can you?" Rafiq asked in mock exasperation. He quite enjoyed the occasional poking from Sofia. It reminded him of his sister and made him feel quite at home amongst his new family.

"Nope, standard policy. Just ask Cap Bear." Sofia grinned.

"She's got you there, Rafiq", Bear said in agreement with an equally goofy grin.

Zekko asked, "But how did it go? What did those deskreens say when they heard about the double Pegasus strike?"

"Actually, we thought it best not to mention that", Bear replied.

"What? Why?", Sofia and Zekko both said in unison.

"Because it was a fluke." Rafiq said, slightly annoyed that his teammates made such a big deal of that shot. "I told you, the second strike was complete luck and uh..."

Bear put up his hand and Rafiq immediately went quiet. "Luck or not, we had to report about our new crew teleporter first. And that went significantly less than ideal."

"But didn't you say back at Signovia that you coaxed the supply guy?", Sofia asked.

"I did... on Signovia. I had a feeling his word wouldn't be much help here. After all, we did purchase it from the black market. And how do you think people would react if word got out that the Federation's own military uses black market equipment on their ships? If nothing else, it'd give those pesky anti-feder propagandists in Solcen some ammo. Hell, we almost got court martialled before I reminded the brass who saved this entire spacetown and two others from certain death. So we got off with just a show-cause."

Zekko whewed. "Wow. Hettic be praised!"

"You said it, Sunn", Bear continued. "After that, neither of us was in the mood to talk much. Again, I'm sorry you got yelled at alongside me, Rafiq. You had nothing to do with the decision to buy the teleporter. To be threatened with court martial after their first mission generally doesn't bode well for a greenie's will."

Rafiq replied, "I told you already, captain, it's fine. I'd rather forget about that whole fiasco."

"I hear ya'. So anyway, next when we got to report Rafiq's progress, I just said it was better than satisfactory and took him off probation as our new Gunnery private."

Rafiq waved both his hands childishly and said a cheerful "woohoo".

"You realize that with a 'better than satisfactory' remark on your probation assignment, you could've applied for a position at a station defence force, right Fick?" Sofia asked.

Everyone immediately stared at Sofia. Rafiq was shocked that she would say that. He wondered if she still saw him as a greenie and was trying to get rid of him for a better gunner.

She continued, "Don't get me wrong, Fick. I'm happy that you're coming aboard full time. It's just that, your chances of survival as an SDF personnel is significantly higher than as a ranger."

Now everyone turned their eyes toward Rafiq.

"She's right, Rafiq", Zekko said. "On my last mission aboard Garker, the craft I served in prior to getting transferred here, we got boarded and lost 4 of our crew before we managed to repel them and jump away."

Earlier, while the Space-Kite was still en route to Shahrengil, Bear had called Rafiq to the cockpit and talked with him privately about this. Despite the risks, Rafiq had decided to stay aboard as a ranger. He already felt a connection with his crewmates. They had become like a family in these few divs and he wasn't ready to let that go.

Rafiq spoke, "I knew that, Sof. It's my understanding that we soldiers can't do our job properly if we're worried about our own survival over those we protect."

Sofia had a retort ready. "Big idealist words coming from a greenie."

"Maybe. But that's my logic."

"Logic wouldn't have saved you if a breach bomb went off inside the medbay while you were in there."

Rafiq looked Sofia straight in the eye and said, "We all die, Sofi. The point is, to live a life worth dying."

Sofia went silent. That was something she believed in herself as well. She didn't expect Rafiq to have the same ideals as her own.

Bear started patting Rafiq on the back, startling him. He stared at the captain blankly.

Bear said, "Welcome aboard the Space-Kite, Gunnery Private Zardari."

Rafiq fumbled to give a salute. "Sir."

"Not bad, greenie", Sofia spoke. "Where'd you get that last one from? Some Feder propaganda pamphlet?"

Rafiq replied, "Nope. Made it up myself. Why? You think it's good enough for a pamphlet?"

Sofia smiled widely.

"Alright. We need to celebrate. Where's that culsiryne stew you said you bought on Teg'rysen?", Zekko asked Sofia.

Bear spoke, "Good thinking, Zekko. This is the perfect occasion. You three set up the meal. Pomeroy and I'll check out if we got any transmissions from command."

While Zekko, Sofia and Rafiq prepared the folded table and stools that were strapped at a corner of the cargo bay, Bear and Pomeroy headed toward the cockpit.

"So what do you think, Pomeroy? He makes a good crewmate?" Bear asked.

"Affirmative. Improvement of crew morale with Private Zardari on board, over 80%, including yours.", Pomeroy replied sheepishly, not that his voice carried the emotion.

"You don't say.", Bear chuckled. "So, how was the intel from Rogdus 4's logs and the interrogation?"

* * *

"And thanks to our recent dealings with the black market, we've been selected to investigate the lead in the Haarito sector, specifically the spacetown Tolbin." Captain Lagardy said after finishing his bowl of culsiryne stew. "Intel from the Rogdus suggests there's a secret Sevril outpost there. We are to investigate the locals and find if the intel's correct or not. We'll be on our own, as usual, since the nearest Federation base is on the planet Jelf, 240 parsecs away from Tolbin."

"A remote spacetown, eh? Could get hairy. Afraid greenie?" asked Sofia while chewing on a culsiryne leaf.

Rafiq ignored her and asked Lagardy, "How's the general attitude to humans there?"

"Population of Tolbin, 6551 as per last quarter's consensus. Of which human population, 2703", Pomeroy replied. The engi's clean platter lay in front of him on the table. Despite not having a biological digestive system, it was ironically the engis whose plates remained the cleanest after a meal because they use their nanomachines to absorb all foodstuffs and then break it into its constituents and absorb the nutrients directly to said nanites, which left their plates completely spotless. The engis are so thorough that their plates don't even require washing which was the reason Pomeroy was the designated leftover-cleaner and dishwasher aboard the Space-Kite.

"Already more than 40%. Wow!" Lagardy grinned. "We spread faster than proselian ringviruses in a batch of mangoranges. But even humans on Tolbin aren't too keen with us Feders."

"Not surprising. Haarito has always been a sector rife with independent unions. Sadly, that usually means a haven for pirates and the likes", Zekko said as he stood up from the floor. Unfortunately, there was no stool in the Space-Kite's cargo that could hold the rock's weight. But Zekko didn't mind sitting on the floor.

Bear spoke as he pushed his plates towards Pomeroy. "Yep. Anyway, we leave at 0900. We'll drop by Jelf to report first, then head to Tolbin, investigate and then return to Jelf for debriefing."

The rest of the crew had finished their meal and stood up as well. Rafiq gave Pomeroy a hand gathering the rest of the plates.

"0900? Why so late?" Sofia asked.

"Because a couple of inspectors are gonna drop by in the morning to check out our new crew teleporter." Bear made a little air-quote while saying the word 'inspector'.

"Riiight! Okay!" Sofia nodded.

"Yup", Bear sighed. "Of all the bureaucratic nonsense! Anyway, let's get this place cleaned up and turn in for the night. I'm beat."

While Pomeroy carried the dishes to the pantry, the rest of the crew folded up the chairs and the table and strapped them back in the corner of the cargo bay, before heading towards the sleeping cabin.

* * *

About half an hour later, the crew of the Space-Kite were all in their beds fast asleep, except for Rafiq who laid awake on his bed staring at the cabin's ceiling, busy in thought.

It has only been 6 divs since he left Signovia and less than 3 decadivs since he got out of the training academy. In that short time, he's taken part in 2 full-scale skirmishes, willingly committed acts of murder, took part in illegal trading with black marketers and got his entire body pelted with shrapnels from a breach bomb.

Was this the life he had expected four styears ago, when he signed up for the military? A part of Rafiq wanted to say, 'Of course not' but he had expected something like this. Maybe not exactly this, but it was close enough.

He remembered how his family was evacuated from the spacetown Lantasy, located near the planet Neptune, to the inner planets, when the mantis invasion fleet was spotted in the outer Sol system. Soon after, he had seen the video of how Lantasy was attacked and destroyed by the invading crafts.

A few mantis ships used this distraction to make a bombing run towards Earth, the human origin-planet. The planetary anti-ship batteries successfully fought off the attackers and soon after, the Federation put together their own fleet and along with the Human United's armada, fought the invading mantis fleet in the Battle of Outersol. The battle lasted for four divs and both sides suffered large casualties. Eventually the remnants of the mantis fleet retreated and the mantis clans opted for their standard guerrilla warfare.

Rafiq was 17. He was just about to complete his school final examination and move to college but the invasion delayed the exam. Like all students, he was glad that the exam was postponed, but not for the same reasons as most other students. He was glad because the invasion made him realize what he wanted to do in his life, which prior to that point he was quite unsure about.

He wanted to help. He didn't want to go to college and study something he would or wouldn't like. He wanted, above all, to protect his family from harm. And so he went and signed up for the military, despite all his parents' protests. His parents were both civilians. In fact, he still has no idea if there had ever been anyone else in his family who was a soldier. His parents were afraid, as all parents would be, to lose their only son to a lucky strike from a giant insect. But his mind was made up.

Fast forward four styears, and here he is, a newly-recruited ranger, lying in a bunk-bed inside a Kestrel class cruiser, in a spacetown millions of parsecs away from Solcen and his family, at the edge of mantis and pirate controlled space.

"Dayum, Fick! Not bad. Definitely not bad." Rafiq said with a smile as he shifted in his bed.

"Problem with sleeping?", came Pomeroy's voice from the bunk below.

"Sorry, didn't mean to wake you Pomeroy." Rafiq whispered. "I was just thinking about how I came here."

"Confusion", the engi replied quietly. "Arrival craft, the Space-Kite. Time of arrival, 1922 hours."

"No, I mean… uh never mind. I'll go to sleep now. Sorry again."

"Affirmative. Proper sleeping schedule necessary for fully biological lifeforms."

"Yep, and more so for us soldiers. Good night."

"Likewise, Private Zardari."

* * *

Footnote:

Bioscan-banking: Banking system utilizing the customers' biometric scan; a common feature in the core sectors but not as much in the outer cossverse, mainly due to the large distance from the banks' central databases.

Deskreen: Slang term for people whose work involves sitting at a desk and staring at vidscreens i.e. people working in an office.

Hettic: One of the many gods of the rocks.


End file.
